#everyone else God knows. but most consistently bisexual

[meatgrinder-0]

do u have any sexuality/gender hcs for ford or mayb other gf characters ?

U,MMM,MMM,M good question cause Idek. for ford hes transmasculine to Me and gay. definitely somewhwre on the aroace spectrum but my thoughts on that are Way too complicated for a simple hc ask im not going to forcefully subject everyone to my ford and romance rant. and he hasSomething going on with his gender but he has to kill bill cipher so he drc ab That rn. ummm. fiddleford is also trans trust me here. and bisexual. uhhhh beyond that my hcs get fuzzy and incoherent and change every 2 seconds big big Fan of transfeminine stan hcs . really to me the pines family is bisexual except for gay ford nods my head yiu understand this all my words are not nonsensical and i am Not in fact having trouble conveying things

[majorasnightmare]

taps mic

minthara

*uproarious applause*

okay so like. obviously everyone here knows and understands mintharas romance route is fucking incredible, like we are ALL on the same page here and telepathically communicating our agreement. shes a compelling fascinating character with a fantastic blend of firmly held political beliefs and hypocrisy and surprising mindfulness that makes her a thrill in any party, playing good OR evil.

her character is absolutely magnetic, made all the more enthralling by her stellar voice work and delightful party banter

so. we all know why WE love minthara. but something I find equally engaging is why SHE likes US. the way the companions experience desire is already more interesting and in depth than a lot of older, more familiar rpgs that have to make sure companions are equally approachable regardless of how exactly you spent those many hours in character creation, with actions and dialogue choices capable of boosting their opinions and engaging their romantic interests being accessible more or less regardless of playstyle. this is what gave rise to the dreaded "player-sexual" term: a romancable npcs who seems utterly devoid of sexuality or desire EXCEPT for your player character specifically, regardless of gender options selected at the very beginning. the dialogue options presented are so personalized and plot relevant as to reveal nothing at all about their lives outside of the narrative, and any ambient party chatter is loose and vague enough as to avoid potentially turning an interested player away. the end result is an npc who is technically canonically bisexual, but avoids engaging with sexuality or desire in any meaningful way and only expresses that bisexuality exclusively through the fact the player can choose either of two gender settings at creation before romancing them.

minthara, and all of the origin companions, are NOT that, thank GOD. the degrees to which companions openly discuss their desires vary, but are nonetheless fairly consistently present, but we arent here for them. we are here for lolths specialest princess and her 4d8 smite not including paralyzing critical damage. and minthara specifically is a fun choice for analysis because she is Loudly and Proudly Menzoberranzan. which means WE get to play with drow gender politics and cultural influence on the expression of gendered desire! YIPPEE

okay so the biggest misunderstanding I get repeated by people who kill minthara at the grove is that she hates men. which is crazy because, last time I checked, her personalized greetings actually only check for being a high elf of any gender, being a drow man, or being a drow woman, and everyone else gets a more generic true soul greeting. and i KNOW most of these people arent playing male drow. she MIGHT call female true souls sister offhandedly when she implores you to attack the grove, but admittedly its been a while since I checked her dialogue and this is an off-the-top-of-my-head ramble and not a cited analysis. anyways back on topic. minthara is pretty openly biased against drow men, specifically, which continues to a lesser degree even after being rescued from moonrise, but is highly contextual and pointedly SPECIFIC. minthara does not, in my experience, make off the cuff derogatory comments towards men as a general thing. she has menzoberranzan politics and ideology, for sure, but her phrasing around those tends to be more careful (saying the honor of matricide better belongs to a daughter than a son, which really only tracks through the lens of menzoberranzan politics and less so through a lens of generalized man hatred).

something else that i think gets widely overlooked, (and this will be relevant), is that minthara is funny. she has a very flat deadpan style of humor that relies on a rugpull at the end for its punchlines. why exactly is this relevant, you may ask? well as i was discussing how minthara tends to specifically demean drow men, you may have thought to yourself "wait, but minthara says LOTS of rude things to my male party members ALL the time!" well. shes literally joking. and that isnt me speculating, either! if, playing as origin gale, you recruit minthara and spend your playthrough interacting with her, and survive to the epilogue party, you get a dialogue option remarking on how she consistently calls gale "the wizard". in that dialogue branch, minthara goes on to explain she has been consistently paying close attention to gale AND the kind of person she is, and says she does things like refuse to use him name SPECIFICALLY because she KNOWS hes taking it as teasing and that she enjoys doing that! we know gale tends to interpret minthara's harsher dialogue more positively just by his reaction to her recruitment, and this dialogue confirms its a two way street for them. her calling gale a third son after he asks if shes going to say something awful? thats them playing with each other. canonically. and this is consistent with ALL of the male companions! she playfully insults astarion by calling him a pleasure servant, knowing astarion prides himself on vanity and his good looks, and astarion responds equally playfully about how shes inadvertently complimented how beautiful he is, knowing she dislikes saying nice things so openly. minthara teases wyll about mizoras flirtatious nature and her MO of seducing people into pacts specifically because she knows he prides himself on being a slow burn romantic, and then teasingly compliments him by saying a failure to seduce him would be a bruise on her pride (revealing that she thinks highly enough of wyll to consider him a prize worth bragging about, even in the hypothetical context of an impartial one night stand).

mintharas FUNNY and while she rarely lets herself openly admire others, she DOES try to joke with them! understanding this about her recontextualizes a LOT of her party banter and makes a lot of her interactions more genuinely wholesome. the only male party member minthara actively dislikes is minsc, and its explicitly because he repeatedly refers to ass so often (in the context of butt kicking but. it IS a lot), and her tone there implies it has an objectifying feeling to it when minthara overhears the things minsc says.

minthara also openly admires gortash, repeatedly and without prompting, and she admires him specifically for a lot of the traits she finds enjoyable period. hes competent, pragmatic, and ambitious, but willing to compromise and ally himself with others if it suits him, and i feel like a more quote-unquote "misandrist" minthara would not so blatantly admire such a man for the very traits that allows one to excel in Lolthite society without making at least SOME passing mention of gender, at the very least something closer to her comments regarding dolors matricide. as far as ive experience, minthara only really brings up her explicitly gendered distaste ONLY in regards to drow men. minthara is generally fairly good at contextualizing her own experiences to the culture she was raised in, and avoiding generalizing those experiences to other cultures. shes MUCH more likely to assume something is specific to her home than assume it to be universally true, and i feel like this is especially true regarding gender politics. as far as i can recall, her only slipup is referring to the ruling body of baldurs gate as matriarchs before correcting herself to patriars, and pointedly those are both highly gendered terms associated with positions of political and familial power.

this has been a whole lotta Post about why minthara does not in fact Hate All Men, but thats honestly because theres just more to discuss there. minthara openly admires and desires women, and unlike some of her subtler character traits, minthara being sapphic is one of the few things people can pick up on right out the gate. there simply isnt as much to say here that doesnt veer into more cut and dry upfront aspects of mintharas desire, rather its how she engages with and desires masculinity that has the caveats here. mintharas desires in women are what she finds baseline attractive: she enjoys a go getter. she finds ambition and hungry power seeking to be attractive, and ruthless pragamaticism is a major selling point for her, and admirable all on its own. she enjoys when someone is coldly calculating, and she thinks its hot when you kill people and dont give a shit. none of these desires are gendered, rather, they are simply traits more common and encouraged among the women she grew up and around. these are not innately feminine traits, but they are culturally feminine in mintharas experience. in short, gortash is admirable because he acts like any other admirable drow woman minthara would find back home. minthara understands both of these things to be true: that this is not inherently gendered but simultaneously how SHE expresses her gender, and furthermore are culturally gendered from a society she admires and misses in equal measure (even if she no longer agrees with the underlying theocratic reasoning behind it).

things that are culturally feminine in menzoberranzan are her baseline point of desire in seeking a partner, and she seeks those traits in potential partners regardless of gender. however, things that are culturally masculine in menzoberranzan are general traits she finds distasteful. the gendered politics of menzoberranzan are such that the gendered role of a drow man is one of being a sycophant, one who bolsters his own social standing by attaching himself to a powerful woman and then people-pleasing enough to avoid being discarded. The role of being a drow man is one of debasement, victimization, asskissing, and servitude, with the permissible reactions to this role being a kind of desperate ambition to carve a bit more breathing room within the box without meaningfully breaking free of it (see: most wizards being drow men). And minthara almost universally dislikes all of that. However, something thats culturally masculine in AND out of menzoberranzan is a trait minthara DOES desire in her partners, with it even being one of her key emotional lynchpins: protectiveness. A lot of male drow consorts are expected to both go out of their way to protect and give their lives for their matriarchs, and the biggest threat to a matron mother is usually only other matron mothers, and the agents they move through. a consort CAN be weaponized as a threat in this way, but its more like poaching, in that a consort is promised a better position with a higher ranking house in return for aiding the destruction of his current house. In this way Menzoberranzan maintains its culture of duplicitious intrigue and discouraging vulnerability, while simultaneously having an admirable model of masculinity one can idealize in a culture that actively subjugates men as a gendered role.

The safest thing a drow man can be without being pathetic to the point of disdain, is a loyal guard dog. And thats something minthara openly craves in her partner, having someone to guard her back and protect her from threats, and more importantly someone to guard her vulnerability. minthara admires the culture of menzoberranzan, and views her childhood (and the traumas it inflicted) positively because of her pragmatic acknowledgement of her skillset, knowing that it would not be nearly so keenly focused and practiced had she not grown up the specific way she had. Simultaneously, the loneliness and paranoia it instilled in her is something she desperately wants relief from, and only really seeks that out from a romantic partner.

Mintharas bisexuality is so compelling to me because of how her desires are so couched in her heritage while she avoids removing them from that context. The things she wants, what she finds attractive, the traits that take her from a passing fascination to a deeply committed relationship, are gendered in a way that would make it difficult for her to be satisfied with the average gender conforming individual from her home city. And this is more or less confirmed by Minthara only really mentioning one actual lover, having a plethora of suitors instead. Minthara desires a partner who has to come off to her as feminine to be attractive, but masculine to fully commit to them, and that particular set of traits would be hard to reliably find in a society where gender dynamics are harshly enforced and strictly stratified. Its a very distinctly bi-and-pan experience where even if you DO find a partner thatd hypothetically pass as a het couple, you do so in such a way that fails to conform to the gendered norms of your partnership and STILL manages to trip flags for being queer even if your literally a m-f couple.

Its a deeply lonely experience that echoes so much of mintharas character, that i find it difficult to engage with her narrative without coming back to HOW minthara experiences attraction in the first place, what she wants and how she wants it and who she wants it from and when she feels shes allowed to have it. Her romance route is endlessly rewarding to me because of it, engaging with this deeper level of her character and her desires and how she expresses them and how Minthara herself interacts with gender roles in the context of drow expressions of romance and sexuality (not even getting to her alurlssrin dialogue! an eilistraean expression of love!!) and its just SO immediately interesting and engaging that even though minthara has a full act LESS of general content, she manages to be equally as dynamic and in depth as most of the origin companions.

i just. love minthara and i love the way she loves.

[respectthepetty]

The Loyal Pin - Episode 9

I love that this episode started with one color-coded brother being so happy after a night of partying.

And the other one losing his color because he is internally freaking out trying to convince himself that Anin basically had sex with her best friend on the lawn for everyone and God to see because she was drunk. Keep telling yourself that lie, dear brother. I used that excuse in college too. Alcohol just makes people gay . . . er. Sure, Jan.

But we all know Anin is sexing up her girlfriend, SOBER, so now it's time for a color-coded beach trip, so TV can lie to us again that sex in the sand is romantic and not torturous. However, the skin is awfully soft after rolling around it in for a bit, so I guess beach sex has its perks beyond, you know, it being sex.

But the heteros do not understand the queer agenda and immediately start wrecking Pink Person Pin and Blue Beauty Anin's beach sex plans.

However, Ueangfah is color-coded yellow, and Pranot is in shorts, so even though it's looking bad for the lesbians, the bisexuals are thriving, and the bisexuals are ME!

Shesus Christ! Nevermind, nobody is doing well now that Kuea has shown up IN BLUE! This is actually why I stopped writing this recap because I was livid when I saw this mediocre man wearing Anin's color. The audacity of a cis hetero man will never stop amazing me. It's cool that he picked up that Pin likes her love interest in blue but he missed one important factor in that equation. HE NEEDS TO BE A GIRL! All that money, yet he can't buy a damn clue.

Yet the girls are still trying to Live, Laugh, and Love under these terrible color-coded conditions!

But Aon is playing these color-coded games too in order to get Anin's attention and wearing versions of pink and purple throughout the trip. Basically the love rivals are waging a strategic color-coded war, and if I wasn't so pissed off at them, I'd be really proud of the wardrobe department for acing this assignment and earning its paycheck.

But I AM pissed because these rivals are doing the most to get in between the ladies and make color-coded fetch happen when IT'S NEVER GONNA HAPPEN, GRETCHEN!

One of them even decides to go as far as DROWNING to get attention! This is like the extreme version of "instigating a fight so his hands can be on you" but because we are dealing with lesbians it's "drowning in the beach trip so her lips can be on you." And I know she didn't do it on purpose, but the structural sexism in this scene with all the men refusing to give her CPR because it wasn't proper is why feminism is for EVERYONE! There is nothing inherently sexual about lips touching lips, yet even when SAVING A LIFE, everyone made that shit sexual (INCLUDING PIN!) and I'm looking at a show set in the 50s (60s?) and feeling like it's about 2024, so now I'm pissed about it.

And this is how I know Aon is not showing her true colors because unlike everyone else who has a consistent color, she is flip flopping like those fish she almost drowned with in the water.

But it doesn't matter because now that Aon is out of commission, the girls can get a moment together to try to make beach sex happen. Spoiler: It doesn't happen because Pia is not about that "Be Gay, Do Crime" life (fun fact: public sex on a beach is illegal in most places, like Thailand).

Which means the beach sex is on hold AGAIN because the color-coded brothers must make sure they throw a party (which Pranot does not plan and it's probably why everyone hates it!), and it also means that the love rivals are at it again with the color-coded shenanigans starting with Aon, in purple.

And now Kuea enters in blue.

But my sunshine Ueangfah is looking hella fine and doing her best to bring a smile to Anin's face who is pressed that Pink Person Pin is dancing with Kuea even though it was her own color-coded brother WHO IS A PRINCE that keeps forcing Pin to do this little song-and-dance, literally. I'm gonna grab my girl Ueangfah and head out because she deserves better and by 'better,' I mean me.

Pranot is judging this entire shitshow safely from his seat because 1) he did not plan any of this so this is not his shitshow, and 2) unlike these other men, he knows better than to get in the way of lesbians and beach sex, so he makes sure to keep his ass seated and not ask none of them to dance instead opting to down this awful wine that he knows damn well does not pair well with the food. He is a king among peasants.

But because of the hard work of Prik and Pia, the real VIPs here, the color-coded girls in love finally get beach sex!

AND A PROPOSAL! A sand version of the pink sasa bunny that Anin gave Pin with A 💗 P on it holds the ring that will forever tie Anin to Pin's heart (and will cause them a lot of problems, but those are tomorrow's problem, not today's).

The girls' skin is soft (from beach sex). They are glowing (from beach sex). And they are practically engaged! All is well and they can now live happily ever after.

That is until this Blue Bastard pops back up.

He instantly clocks the ring on Pin's finger and instead of minding his own business, he apparently will make it everyone's problem because the man is determined to marry a lesbian who doesn't love him nor want him, and I am once again standing in front of y'all screaming that feminism benefits everyone including men who think they need a wife to be complete.

Pia and Prik pick up what I'm dropping off, and are backing up their girl in this battle for Pin's hand as they wear blue . . . and orange . . .

And this is where some of y'all really lost your minds because Anin wore yellow thinking it might have been connected to my babygirl Ueangfah, but have no fear because I offered a Wild Ass Theory way back in the second episode.

As the color-coded girls in love age and inherit more adult responsibilities, I think they will incorporate another color.

And those colors are the ones that belong to their mothers.

The girls have been living in a nice little bubble in Pine Palace, but Anin is a princess and Pin is not, so the expectations for their positions in life are coming at them quicker than they want to believe. Pin's mom has mentioned several times that both girls must marry, and Anin's brothers have made similar comments, so even though the girls are growing closer, I think harsh reality is already sneaking into their plans and the colors might be telling us that.

So I think the girls need to be careful or they will turn into the mothers, and because I think Pin's mom is a lesbian who vowed to be the perfect woman rather than love someone else after status tore her and her girlfriend apart, the truth might be closer than I realize, and her color-coded story is similar to the girls in more way than one.

But the colors could all be meaningless, and I could just be crazy. Who knows, you know?

[absolutebl]

Mirror mirror on the wall,who are the top 5 greenest flags of them all?

ooof, this is more @heretherebedork than my cuppa but lemme see

you didn't specify seme or country so that makes my life easier, because bettcha can't guess who's gonna top this list

My Top 5 Greenest Flags in BL!

Noh from Love Sick

Look, he's just like the Nicest Little Dude. He's loyal and kind and good to his friends, and tries really hard to communicate the truth and be honest about his feelings even when he's a crazy hormonal teen and doesn't understand his own or anyone else's. Noh is not just any green flag he's a teenager green flag. That never happens.

Xun An from My Tooth You Love

He is so damn sweet and thoughtful and he tries so hard to protect everyone (except himself). But it's that moment in the car where he finally understands the extent of his baby's psychological issues that we all got to meet The Real Deal. Because what does he do? OMG he actually recommends Bai Lang seek professional help, from an actual therapist! Like that's THE MOMENT. The biggest green flag balls we have ever seen in a BL. Ever. I will brook no discussion on this matter.

Plustor from Destiny Seeker

Bite me. I know you haven't seen this. How do I know? No one has seen this show. Such a shame. Plustor is 1/2 of the 3rd-string couple, the crumbs, the freshmen babies. Most of the drama is with the 2 older pairs, but these boys are GREAT. One of them is out gay (with his shit together) who hooks up with hot jock CHAOS bisexual and we all think we know where it's going (because when does the chaos bi have his shit together and not act like a predator slut? - yes I AM looking at you, Mame). Except, Plustor fucking TOTALLY has his shit together! He researches gay sex and how to do it right, he asks his new bf questions, he communicates his self-confidence issues over never having been with a dude before. He talks. They talk. As a result these kids spend most of the show annoyed by the unnecessary drama of their piers who do NOT have their shit together and being the best bfs ever.

Mork from My Ride

What, you surprised? Mork goes through an entire identity crisis and manages NOT to drag anyone else into his drama. He keeps his life together, takes care of his family, asks his gay uncles for advice, realizes he is in love. He does not force that love on his beloved. Instead he stays in the side lines, tries to be a good supportive friend to the object of his affection, and a consistently chooses the path of decent human being. He's careful and kind and communicative when he eventually does make his move. Stand up dude! Adorable dimple! We likie.

Yak from Wandee Goodday

I feel like I have to include someone from this year because Green Flag Semes are such a 2024 trend. For me, it just had to be Yak. He such a great communicator and he just defines the GGG (good, giving, game) attitude that one wants in a sexual partner. I gotta say, it's actually not uncommon to have better sexual communication with a play partner or a fuck buddy than within a relationship. It was nice to see that portrayed on our screens in a BL. Whatcha know, mature characters being mature and shizz. Insanity.

I have to say, if you had given me 6, Alan from Pit Babe would have also made this list.

Others I Thought About

Seryou (Seven Days)

Kakeru (I Cannot Reach You)

Ida (My Love Mix Up)

Kyosuke (Sugar Dog Life) - does cluelessness count?

Kazuma (Tokyo in April)

Both in Some More

Qizhang (About Youth)

Sato (See You After Quarantine?)

Tatch (2 Moons 3)

X (21 Days Theory)

King (Bed Friend)

Khun (Brothers)

Karan (Cherry Magic)

Fueangnakhon (City of Stars)

Gun (Tossera)

Ram (La Cuisine)

Ae (Love By Chance) - I'm WELL AWARE I'm picking a Mame character

God (Monster Next Door)

Li (Moonlight Chicken)

Sun (Sunset X Vibes)

Latte (Knock Knock Boys)

Moo (Only Boo!)

Rome (Puppy Honey)

Alan (Pit Babe)

Touch, Sky (Secret Crush on You)

Na (Tonhon Chonlatee)

Tan (We Are)

San (You're My Sky)

Oh should I define what green flag means to me?

respectful: no dubious consent, takes no for an answer and stops, alcohol is not an excuse,

honest: depicted demonstrating good communication - verbal, emotional, physical

safe: practices safe sex

decent: no violations (emotional, ethical, moral, sexual, cultural, or ya know legal) like breaking into his fucking hotel room

dependable: I'd be fine if my nibbling were trapped in an elevator with him

kind: forthright and not inclined to be manipulative

(source)

[doueverwonder]

Can I hear more about your OC's? Doesn't matter who, it can be any

YES YES YOU CAN I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

okokokokok so this is going to be SO disorginized but i'm gonna talk about my hre oc bc the only canon character i truly hate is hre i want to punt the child

her human name is Adelheid Dietrich but she regularly just goes by Heidi. Her first name means Nobility, and her last name means Ruler of the people; very fitting name for how much power she held in Europe for so long.

Her parents are Gaul and Germania, she very notably was never very close with her mother, and very close with her father until the the last few years of his life. (The Saxon wars, and Heimeric's own refusal to convert contributed to the deterioration in their relationship but that deserves it's own post) I don't have her exact year of birth pinned down yet, but sibling wise she is between Austria and Switzerland. Roderich being a few years older, and Aldrich being a few years younger. Heidi is only 1 of 2 girls in the family and was fiercely protective of Belgium, even as adults, if anything happened to Bel she would regularly blame herself for 'letting' it happen. She had decently rocky relationships with most of her siblings, but would get in screaming matches with Denmark over the most insignificant things. Reasonably bitter because she did end up substitute mom for about half her younger siblings, specifically Netherlands, Belgium & England. And she should not have had to do that. Eldest Daughter Syndrome(TM) personified. Would get into an argument with Dan, Nor, and Swe not long after their father died that would consist of "Everything i've done to keep our family together and this is how you thank me? 'No'? Just because you don't want to? Do you know all i've given up? I didn't get a childhood. But it's fine. Do what you want." v much a The things she said weren't right, but the emotions she was having were definitely there.

She was terrified of death. Just from the moment she gained consciousness she couldn't think of anything worse then running out of time. And tbh that's probably what drew her to Christianity, and kept her there, the idea that death wouldn't be the end, and it would be a happy after. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life" She's sold before the missionary can say anything else. That didn't stop her from being independent to a fault, which is where Lutheranism came into play; she was tired of being under Vatican's thumb (for lack of better term) so the moment the Reformation came around she was on board with that too. But all of that isn't to say she didn't have a complicated relationship with religion especially after a relationship--that i'll get to in a minute--constantly held it over her head as the whole reasoning for why she shouldn't do certain things; and it always worked because nothing scared her more than the idea that doing something would send her to Hell.

Anyway on romantic relationships; she was super queer. Would probably identify as bisexual in the year of our Lord 2023. She only ever had 2 notably relationships with other personifications; the first was with Czechia. It was very secretive, they were young, and dumb, and swore they would love no one but each other. (I actually wrote a little thing about them here). It somewhat obviously did not work out, because Heidi was scared of someone finding out about them, and after almost a century of being together she thought someone was getting to close to figuring it out; Adéla tried to insist it would be fine. Heidi panicked came up with a plan, and got Adéla to agree to it without telling her what it was. Within a couple months not a single person thought Adéla and Heidi were together... no they were too busy talking about how Clemens (Vatican) had supposedly broken his chastity vow and 'you'll never believe who for.' That was the end of her relationship with Czechia; it wasn't supposed to be. But it was.

Her second one was also a 'secret' but everyone knew about it. (so side note on my Vatican oc; remember he was born to represent West Rome and his land claim diminished as his children came along. Until eventually he picked up the title of the papal states then Vatican/Holy See). They met long before their 'romantic' relationship started, when Germania brought his at the time only daughter along to Rome and Vatican decided he just had to have her, and the sons of Rome usually get what they want. When they were very young they had a psuedo-relationship that really just happened because it was the first time they thought someone was cute and the other person thought the same. When she slept with him to cover her and Adéla's tracks, it was calculated. She had to have proof, and she had to have one or two people who she knew would talk have an inkling that it happened so rumors would start. What she didn't count on was him still having some of those feelings from hundreds of years earlier, she assumed he'd moved on completely. His children had to have come from somewhere. But now that Czechia didn't want anything to do with her she thought 'fuck it' and went along with a relationship that she didn't really want, but by now wasn't going to refuse either. And they would just stay that way, off and on, usually just sleeping with each other not much actual substance, but not so little that either would leave. They were just Stuck.

Jumping forward a bit to her death, she and Germany had a little less than a month overlap. He was born July 12th, 1806; and she died August 6th, 1806. She was already very sick when he was born, but asked to see him every day without fail. Austria told her eventually that he was sending Germany to live with Prussia, deemed he would be safer anywhere but Vienna. She argued with him over that, for a long time; insisted she wouldn't trust Brandenburg or Prussia to rear a child if they were some of the last people on earth. Austria got fed up, told her Germany was his son and he would do whatever he wanted with him. She argued back Germany was her heir, and she believed her heir should be raised in Vienna, not Königsburg, not Berlin, not Potsdam, Vienna. The argument stood until her death two weeks later, Austria to this day wishes he hadn't told her.

Everyone in the house knew about Heidi's fear, there wasn't a single person in Europe that didn't know about it. They all waited for something to register, for it to kick in that she more than likely wouldn't be making it another month, much less another year. But it never did, August 1st she got better, and for a solid two days she was even out of bed; it was during this Austria and Prussia caught her giving Germany a little speech.

"Now, you'll be taking over my job. I'm not promising it's an easy one because it isn't. The ones under you are insane, every last one, constantly fighting and they're changing all the time; every time you turn around someone new will have shown up, or someone else will have disappeared. I hope not too many disappear on you, but eventually you get used to it, and not in a sad way, in a "maybe they're off living their own life without the responsibility of thousands of peoples lives now". Unfortunately the annoying ones stick around the longest, your father is one, your uncle Gilbert is another. Saxony, Bavaria, Hesse, Brandenburg etc.. you'll have to get used to them, I don't think they're going anywhere. I know your parents are worried for you right now, but I'm sure it's completely unfounded and they're just dramatic. You'll be just fine... I wish I could stay to watch you grow up, i'm sure you'll be in charge of this whole continent eventually. You have to promise you'll make your family talk about me, don't let them be too sad about it, I want to be known as the interesting aunt not the one who died when you were a baby. Can you promise me that Ludwig?"

after those two days she got bad again though, worse than she was initially, and three days later she passed away. The moment they were waiting for never came, she didn't seem scared about the end; she put in her will someone has to make sure whoever killed her knew that she wasn't scared.

[theclearblue]

For the ask game, can I ask for Zoro, Kenjaku and Yona.....

Thanks 🍀

Sure!

Zoro

Sexuality headcanon: This man is as gay as they come. Obviously a big part of his storyline revolves around women, but I've never gotten the vibe that he's into women. The things he says to men ALL the time though...I know what you are...

Gender headcanon: Cis or trans man, either works for me. I've read some really good fics/seen good art of trans Zoro and it makes a lot of sense to me and I enjoy it when I see it, but I'm not really fussed either way.

A ship I have with said character: Zosan forever and always is the OTP for me, and I'm a lot less of a multishipper with Zoro compared to Sanji for some reason lol. I've warmed up a bit on Zolu too but I do still prefer that as more of a platonic soulmate thing, and I know I said I see Zoro as gay but the t4t potential of Zoro/Kiku is quite good too so I'm willing to say he isn't 100% gay because of it.

a BROTP: Him and Chopper are so cute oh my god, the way Zoro acts like a proud/protective older brother to him is really really cute, that's his guy!!! I also LOVE the Zoro and Nami friendship, I think they antagonize each other for fun lmao but I also think they would be really close to each other and have their own special relationship where they can tell each other anything.

A NOTP: Zoro with any woman other than Kiku really, but I know Zoro/Robin is somewhat popular and I don't think I really get it all. I think their relationship/friendship is really interesting especially pre-timeskip where they had to learn to trust each other when Robin first joined the crew, but I think they're just friends who watch each other's backs.

A random headcanon: I'm surprised I don't see this hc more, and maybe it's just me projecting, but this man 100% has ADHD lmao. The way that he gets lost all the time, his hyperfixation on swords and also his dream, his head empty moments throughout the series, how he's somewhat impulsive, and I feel like the meditation/workout routine is how he tries to manage his concentration (also his anxiety).

general thoughts: I absolutely adore Zoro, and he was the one that surprised me the most. I knew about him before starting and thought he would be the "badass and stoic" character that ended up being flat compared to everyone else, and that's just not true. He's SO silly but also has a really good heart and character, that even though he is a loser he is also very cool at the same time. he's more of a simple character but there's still a lot to talk about with him and he's just had consistently strong writing throughout the entire series. I don't talk about him as much as Sanji or maybe even Robin but those three are tied for my fave strawhat.

(Kenjaku and Yona under the cut)

Kenjaku

Sexuality headcanon: Pansexual or bisexual, I think they've lived a thousand years and things such as gender aren't a factor in who they are attracted to. They truly just go for whoever they catches their interest at any given moment in time.

Gender headcanon: Uhhh all of the above lol. Man, woman, nonbinary, no gender, all the genders, whatever they're feeling and however they are perceived is their gender. I think it's similar to the sexuality, you live a thousand years and gender is a construct they abandoned a long long time ago. No matter what I think they're trans though, and all pronouns.

A ship I have with said character: I think every major ship with Kenjaku works for me, and I struggle to pick a favorite. Gojoken, Tenken, Takaken, Kenjin, Mahito/Kenjaku, even Sukuken I find kinda fun lol. If I had to pick one of these, probably Takaken, but I am big Gojoken and Tenken fan so they're close behind.

A BROTP: So the thing about Kenjaku is that they're a cringefail loser and they don't know how to make friends lmao. Maybe Mahito and Kenjaku? I know I put them in the ship category but I think they fit more here, the silliness and horrors they get up to together were a lot of fun to watch.

A NOTP: Hmm I'm struggling to come up with an answer lol. Uhhh I guess the one Heian era character I don't ship with them is Uraume, but I've never actually seen this ship anywhere. Oh I guess if there's any Kenjaku/Yuuji or Kenjaku/Choso I would not be a fan of that either.

Random headcanon: I feel like in the in between time of executing their thousand year evil plan, they sometimes go out every once in awhile like every 20-30 years to engage with human society again and acts like an old man who's never heard of technology lmao. I also think they would say super off putting things that make no sense to anyone like "Man this dish was so much better 80 years ago :(" and the waiter is just staring at this person who looks like they're early thirties at most.

General thoughts: I think they're the most interesting villain in JJK by far, their relationships spanning over a thousand years are messy and mysterious and span far and wide and the small pieces we get are something to theorize on endlessly. I think they are so effective in that they always are doing or saying something interesting/horrific/fun when on screen, but when they are gone that causes more anxiety for the reader. They're a very cruel and inhumane character, but there is almost a melancholic aspect to them too where they have this big plan, but it doesn't even seem to excite them that much. I'm hoping to do a Culling Games reread maybe in the summer mostly just for them tbh.

Yona

Sexuality headcanon: Bisexual but she doesn't know that askhfkl. Obviously she's attracted to men, that's known from the beginning of the series, but whatever she had with Lili....well...I think they had the potential to be more than gal pals given time....

Gender headcanon: Hmm I guess just cis woman. Haven't thought about any other gender for her, and I think that's honestly what she feels comfortable identifying as. If you got any trans/nb hcs for her though I'm open to it.

a ship I have with said character: Have you heard of Hak/Yona....i think they're neat...cool even....yeah most obvious answer lmao but this is really the only romantic ship I like with her (even if Lili/Yona has potential too and I can convince people on the yuri if no other brave soldiers are willing to).

BROTP: All of the dragons, easily. Hak/Yona might be the ship but those five are connected through fate, through lifetimes. it feels like a disservice to pick one over the other even, they all have such a love for Yona and Yona for them, that's found family right there.

A NOTP: I know some people ship Yona with Soo Won and they have maybe my favorite relationship in the whole series, but I just cannot see it as romantic, especially since both have grown so much. Yona's crush at the beginning of the series to me is more "there's this guy I care about a lot, it must be love" and I do think it was/is love, but that's more of a teenager crush that doesn't actually mean anything. Yona loves him, but in a different way from Hak I think.

Random headcanon: This goes more into theory rather than hc, and it may be dreadfully outdated considering how far behind I am, but I don't think Yona will be the ruler by the end of the series (and definitely not Hak for that matter as well). That said I wouldn't be surprised if that does end up being the case, and it would still make sense especially since Soo Won is sick (as far I know), but I feel like her role as this liberator and almost Robin Hood like figure where she travels around to aid people just makes perfect sense for her and the group as a whole. Undeniably Soo Won has been a really good ruler even if he got spot through, you know, murder lmao. Idk I think I need to reread and catch up to really stand by this, but these were my thoughts through a lot of the series.

General thoughts: Yona of the Dawn is my favorite shoujo and for good reason I think, and a very large part of that is how strong of a protagonist I think that Yona is. You see this really compelling arc over the course of the story of her coming of age that I think is really inspiring, where she very much comes into herself fully but also the relationships she develops with everyone are key to her success as well. One of my favorite characters ever go read Yona of the Dawn everyone (<- directed to me who needs to reread the series more than anyone else in the world)

[golden--doodler]

I saw you in my inbox and must immediately go to yours 🥺 Gotta ask you who your favorite Belcher is AND your top 10 favourite side characters 🤌

Oh no, you gave me another hard one! I guess this is going to be another long one, hahaha, get ready.

As for who my favorite Belcher is, that is so tough, almost too tough for me to answer because that changes for me every day, and I love all of the Belchers for very different, specific reasons. Tbh, I relate to all of them on some level. However, if I HAVE to choose, I will choose two, because I am still that indecisive.

I have to go with Linda as one because of her endless optimism and her constant singing spouts, because who hasn't wanted to break out into song like her every once in a while? Honestly, her outros for the show are the best. The one for "Wharf Horse" Part One? COME ON. She is just THAT girl, and she knows it--she is hilarious, she's honestly quite pretty (gotta love her in that blue dress she wore in "An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal") and when you have her affection, she's with you for life, and will go to the ends of the earth for you. She will literally help you hide the evidence of a murder and go on the run for you, she is THAT loyal. Like, seriously, she planned what she would do to help Bob if he ever murdered Teddy, oh my god. And even just her support for the smaller things, like helping Bob with his dream to run the restaurant (okay, maybe this doesn't count as SMALL, but still). She is ALWAYS there to help him have a little light in his life when he needs it. She's always down to have a little fun and spice things up--I mean, who else would come up with "sexy cooking" and a "strip tease" on Valentine's Day? She's so freaking giving, to the point where it's even a detriment to her, as seen in "Terminilator II: Terminals of Endearment", where she let her mom walk all over her because thought that's what she needs to do as their daughter, which is not the case (I'm really glad Bob got upset about this for her, but I really wish she'd actually seen how terrible her parents are). I love all of her little quirks, and she is totally someone I would want to marry or at the very least be friends with irl. I think my Bisexuality is showing with this one, haha.

My second Belcher whom I love will probably be a much less popular opinion. I almost chose Tina for this one, but honestly, I have to go with Gene. He's the Belcher kid who's the most similar to Linda, so I guess that makes sense. I do sorta get why he's not everyone's favorite, but I just can't help but have the biggest soft spot for this guy. His jokes/one-liners are consistently funny, and he always provides the best levity when a scene needs it ("Nature boner!"). Plus, I really relate to his adoration of music even though he's actually not even good at it. Also, just him questioning his love of music was just super interesting overall. But his being objectively not great at playing chords doesn't even matter, because of his sheer passion--and it's this passion that led him to create the BEST songs in the entire show. I mean, "Electric Love"? "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl?" "Turkey, I Need You Beside Me?" You love to see it. These all came from his unadulterated love for music, and I think that's kind of beautiful. I also relate a lot to his love of food, especially during the episode "Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid", where "Turkey, I Need You Beside Me" came from. I mean, I'm the kind of person who pays extra close attention to expiration dates and would never eat expired food (one of my pet peeves is actually when people say expiration dates are a myth), but the fact that all he wanted throughout the episode was to enjoy some of his dad's cooking with his family together on Thanksgiving is just... yeah, I feel that. It's also just so wholesome. Speaking of wholesomeness, I don't know, Gene just feels a little wholesome to me. Besides Tina, he's the nicest of the kids, and usually, despite his non-sequiturs and jokes, he just wants to do right by people, especially people like his dad, which he outright says in "Best Burger". Just him wanting Bob to be proud of him and not see him as a screw-up is so 🥺

Okay, this is already super long, oh god. Onto my ten favorite side characters!

1.) Gonna start out with Sergeant Bosco. I recently watched a compilation of him and remembered how much I love this guy, he's just so freaking funny. I love how he's a cop who's super incompetent and still gets the job done somehow--he's terrible yet great at his job, which is amazing. Especially loved how he tried to give advice on how Linda should do speed-dating in "My Fuzzy Valentine", and then almost arrested Linda for stealing his gun. And just his entire role during "Bob Day Afternoon", trying to take the phone from a screaming Louise, pffffft.

2.) Gotta mention Nat the Limo Driver! Mainly because she's LGBTQ+ and that's wonderful, love that for her. She hasn't appeared that often at all, but the few appearances she's made have been pretty great. I loved seeing her try to win her ex-girlfriend back, and her being super nice and trying to help find that darn ring in the waterpark during "The Ring (But Not Scary)". Also just the fact that she casually was transporting a snake to the aforementioned ex-girlfriend is hilarious.

3.) Regular-Sized Rudy, my beloved! He's so precious all around, I love him and everything about him. I adore how he's such an antithesis of Louise, being pretty much everything one would expect a typical fourth-grader is like, with the added bonus of unfortunately having asthma. He probably only gets a point taken away from being obsessed with Chloe Barbash, but it's fineeeeeeeee. I find the fact that he's a child of divorce super interesting as well, I don't think it'll ever get super explored, but some more on that would be cool, specifically how it's affected him mentally. He's definitely the kind of friend that Louise needs. Also shoutout to his stuffed flounder, Pancake.

4.) I have to acknowledge Gayle Genarro, Linda's younger sister. We all know Gayle. We all love to hate Gayle. Okay, hate is probably too strong a word, but she is just such an enigma of a human being that I kind of love it. Every time she's used, she's so funny and completely freaking unhinged. Sometimes it's hard to believe she and Linda are sisters, and other times it makes perfect sense. I love her saying that Linda is her "best friend and mortal enemy" in "The Pumpkinening". Honestly, that might be my favorite episode she's in. Well, besides maybe "Topsy" or that episode where she helped get Louise a filling at the dentist (I think it's "The Kids Run Away"?). But I just really like her in "The Pumpkinening" because of how close she and Linda are shown to be, and how she admits to actually loving Linda at the end. It's surprisingly a super sweet moment for this otherwise crazy, but lovable character. Everything about her and Mr. Business is top tier.

5.) Zeke! I don't know, there's something about this boy that's really grown on me over time, I want to give him some appreciation. His way of talking and his voice are so recognizable, and I love it, and I can't really explain why? But yeah, if Tina can't get with Jimmy Jr., I might just vote for her and Zeke to be a thing. I think that ship is actually getting to me, but I don't know yet. Anyway, I think we should learn more about his family history because it actually sounds really complicated and sad, yet interesting? Gotta love how much he adores his grandma and step-mom, Cheryl, that's really sweet. And him eventually being the mad pooper for Tina in "Broadcast Wagstaff School News" was great. Ooh, and learning that he has a perfect palate in "Bob and Deliver" was also great.

6.) You gotta love Teddy. He's Teddy, everyone's favorite iconic handyman (side note, that commission you did of him and Teddiursa the Pokémon was so adorable and perfect)! I NEED to know the backstory of how he met Bob and Linda, and how he fell in love with Bob's burgers. And also how it's possible that he STILL thinks their last name is Burger. He and Kathleen are actually a very sweet couple, and he's just a very loving person in general. Like Linda, he's so loyal until the end and will do ANYTHING for Bob and his family and the restaurant, even if he does get on their nerves from time to time. However, it's all out of pure love and respect for the restaurant. He's just so genuinely invested in all their lives, it can get a little weird sometimes, but for the most part, it's wholesome as heck. Love how he also got invested in the whole storyline Linda made up for the raccoons in their alley. And how he stood up for Tina when he babysat them in that one episode.

7.) Mr. Fischoeder is just... what a guy. I just saw the new April Fool's Day episode, and it made me love him even more. He's always hilarious and iconic all around, I mean, how can you not appreciate him? He doesn't seem like a great person to have as your Landlord, but just as a person, he's great. His rivalry with Felix will always be a great staple of the show, and the way he was so chill about almost dying at Felix's hands in the two-part Season 4 finale is so great. How many times has Felix attempted murder on him for him to be so calm about it? Just his random ideas in general, like in "The Oeder Games" and "To Bob, or Not to Bob" are great, as well as his overall presence. I will always love his singing in "Topsy". His Christmas song about Bourbon is top-tier, as is his outro song about being put into a volcano after he's gone so he can stay around in some sort of way.

8.) Okay, fine, I want to acknowledge Mr. Frond, too. Is he a terrible guidance counselor? Well, yes. But is he hilarious? Also yes. That brief time he dated Gayle was so strange yet so entertaining. That one scene where he made that poor kid, Nicholas, admit his deepest darkest secret because he wanted people to say if the hurricane was caused by "something bad they did"?? Oh my lord. His interactions with Louise will always be gold, especially when that one exchange where he says "You're in trouble" and Louise tells him to "Drink more cranberry juice" (Not "Urine Trouble!" >:( ). Also, his entire role in the "My Butt Has a Fever" short is perfection in terms of comedy. Him getting THAT upset over the song only to end up with it stuck in his head too and humming it later? Yup.

9.) Ms. Labonz doesn't have the right to be so funny. Why is she so funny? God. I love how she's just done with everyone 24/7, especially the aforementioned Mr. Frond, and her role in "Touch of Eval(uations)" is actually really nice. I love her telling Louise that she knows Louise is smart and capable, and just needs to apply herself more, and it ending with her getting that brand new parking spot is actually pretty well deserved. Also, she is definitely a heavy smoker. Might want to get your lungs checked out, Ms. Labonz, no offense.

10.) Consider this last space a tie between Hugo Habercore and Jimmy Jr. I couldn't go through this list without Hugo, because even though he is terrible (come on, man, chill for a second, let the Belchers live their lives in peace), man is he funny. His role in the pilot episode "Human Flesh" is iconic in and of itself, his lines are so quotable there. I'm honestly super curious about how he met Linda, and what their relationship was like while it was still going on. I'm also curious about how he became a health inspector and how he met Ron. Is it weird that I almost want him and Ron to have something going on? It sounds so random, and it is, but I don't know, he just needs someone to be with to get over Linda and be a happier/better person, and I like their dynamic. He did have that girl he went on a blind date with in "Romancing the Beef", but she's never seen or mentioned again. As for Jimmy Jr., this was a tough call. There were so many people I wanted to mention but couldn't (I mean, the Pesto twins, Courtney, Jocelyn, Mort, MARSHMALLOW--I'm so sorry I didn't put you on the list, Marshmallow) but I decided to go with Jimmy Jr. Your appreciation for him is rubbing off on me. The guy definitely needs to get better at actually committing (he IS at his worse in "V For Valentine-Detta") and I don't know if I want him to be the one for Tina, I don't think he should, but I don't know, whenever he has a genuine interaction with Tina, it just... ah. It kinda gets to me. It makes me wish he were better so they could actually just be a couple. Lord knows Tina has been wanting him long enough. Seriously girl. But yeah, I love his dancing and his general weird-but-doesn't-care-what-others-think-of-him vibe. Like in the movie when he tried to get a chicken nugget in his mouth just so he could say he did it. That's peak comedy. I love his role whenever he's in an episode, especially in "What About Job?" when Tina made him the villain just because he refused to share gum with her--he also is just a very entertaining villain. I feel like he's so close to being someone who Tina could be with, but is never right there. Oh well.

Side note: Him asking Tina on a genuine frozen yogurt date in the April Fool's Day episode is actually so sweet, what the heck.

This got way too long oh no. I hope you're able to read all of this and get some enjoyment out of it! I tried to condense it but found I had way too many thoughts on these characters. I love them all so much. I probably forgot to mention a few things and made a few mistakes, but here it is.

[fairymint]

6. Do they opmatically assume certain people are lesser than them?

7. Do you ever think that despite your muses actions/morality they do have a point when it comes to their reasons? - volo

It varies a lot whether it's lose verse or win verse, but consistently at the point of in and end game, He sees everyone as lesser, and not worth saving. In ship verses (romantic or platonic, but a concrete and definable bond has to have been formed!!! even if it hasn't actualized.) he does see the protagonist as an exception; they're either equal to him, or second place, slightly below him but greater than Everyone Else. Small children or kids in general would've likely been spared to bring over into the new world- they haven't had a chance to truly be people yet, and don't have the autonomy to change the world or be responsible for it, thanks to most parents' standards. Blank slates as well.

However, it is probably safe to say that win-verse is too far gone and completely selfish- everyone is lesser. Even a ship partner, but the dynamic is nuanced due to the situation- He has gained enough omniprescence and power to attempt to satisfy and soothe their actual desires, rather than needing to either guess, obtain or ask for the knowledge via mortal means. His aim is to spoil. It's complicated with npd, but that works into his personality (and Felix's, to an extent) that treating someone well is motivated by the desire for self-perfection. Volo does like to float quite grey in my opinion- between toxic and ideal; I feel as if you should wonder about him. uncomfortable, but possible not unacceptable. Right on or near the boundaries.

So when people mess up, it gives him an extreme sense of disgust. Verse mostly indicates if, or how he acts out about it. lose verse, aka good guy verse, tends to cope by withdrawing and redirecting, while win verse is active and much bolder in conduct.

But, since NPD deals with wild ego swings technically, this answer will always depend on the moment- such as post-lose verse where his ego will dip extremely low, and he will view himself as 'lesser' and desperate for help to pull him back up. When he messes up, if that's acknowledged in his brain at all, that same sense of disgust permeates in him- but without the want to simply give up- he is not abandoning the grind.

Do you ever think that despite your muses actions/morality they do have a point when it comes to their reasons?

Well of course; Volo as a general character is a symptom of something. Regardless of his autonomy and responsibility- He does not start off as a character that apparently just wakes up and decides to cause problems on purpose. It's more akin to vigilante behaviour. He did create the problem, he's just attempting to solve it in a way that may not be ideal. What the problems that he is a symptom of will depend on the writer, hence the range in portrayal.

I personally tackle a lot- whatever I come up with, but it includes Colonialism (remember Galar's RL equivilent was taking the world by storm IRL), ableism, racism/xenophobia, heteronormativity, and gender (specifically toxic masculinity and femininity respectively depending on verse.) Like, I write about real world scary shit, and I believe I lean more towards the ableism and gender side of these- more that he is an albino bisexual man (and possibly very genderqueer/fluid in god verse).

Like, him being destructive doesn't make the world not suck. The sentiment I see shared is more that people disagree with the way he went about it. It helps that the Xenophobia is straight up canon and demonstrated in game- it's kind of a shame that Volo had to be ironic about his own point and become what he hates (whether he knows that or not.)

[alirhi]

okay. let's do this shit.

Guess what, bitches? Mama bear's back and angry all over again. Remember when I said I might dive into a ragepost about how Bucky's treated after completing the one about Loki? This is it. This is the post. Welcome to fucking Thunderdome.

I will actually try to keep it civil. No promises, but I'll try. and I will not be accepting "constructive criticism" about my rage. Just so we're clear.

Got it? Good. Let's dive in.

In case you don't want to read the whole thing (I know I get wordy) here's what this whole post will boil down to: BUCKY NEVER HAD A FUCKING CHOICE. NEVER. NOT ONCE IN HIS ENTIRE ADULT LIFE.

Now, quick reminder: I don't read comics. I know nothing about Bucky's comic canon, except what Sebastian liked to bring up as often as possible during TWS/CW promotions: at some point, Bucky boned Nat. XD Since Bucky only exists as a Marvel property, I won't be bitching about other source material being disrespected like I did with Loki. This is all MCU, my dudes. And honestly? That's enough, because though we don't see nearly enough of Bucky for my liking, we do manage to get a rich, deep backstory to him in the material we're given, partly thanks to better writing in the early days of the MCU, and partly thanks to Sebastian Stan's phenomenal acting. Unlike the writers of the Loki series, Seb knows how to show, not tell. And gods, what stories those eyes show...

Let's start with the army. In an old post illustrating what an absolute BAMF Bucky Barnes truly is, I mistakenly said he enlisted, and a kind soul educated me on the incredible attention to detail Marvel used to pay - in this case, Bucky's ID number. 32557038. As this kind, eagle-eyed soul pointed out to me, the first two digits of that number - 32 - signify that Bucky was drafted, specifically from the NY, NJ, DE area (that last part is rather obvious, as Bucky and Steve are from Brooklyn lol). Bucky didn't choose to go to war. He was drafted. He was forced to fight, or go to prison.

Bucky was born in 1917, which means - again, as someone pointed out to me a while back - he came of age during the Great Depression. As a child, he would likely have seen his parents living comfortably and able to shower each other and him and his sister with gifts and fun memories, and then POOF. Stock market crashes when he's only 12-years-old, and life becomes brutal and painful. He manages to have some fun with his best friend Steve, and spends his teens/early 20s chasing girls and keeping his stupid, stubborn, tiny friend from getting beaten to death.

Steve constantly has something to prove. He's absolutely got what my mom always called "little man's disease", and Bucky's just doing his best not to roll his eyes too much at this asthmatic chihuahua constantly trying to beat up Tibetan mastiffs. While Steve keeps lying on his enlistment forms (an actual crime) trying again and again to get into the army and prove what a badass he is (definitely not), Bucky's had enough trauma and upheaval in his life and he just wants his stupid friend to calm tf down and live. Enjoy the fact that he doesn't have to go to war and get his limbs blown off.

And then he gets fucking drafted. This sweet, resigned realist who knows exactly how dangerous the war really is, is forced to put on a uniform and go fight strangers alongside other strangers thousands of miles from everything he knows. And on his last night of freedom, when he just wants to hang out with his friend, see some cool gadgets, and dance with a pretty girl, his stupid angry chihuahua friend feels the need to lie and try to enlist again.

Okay. Gotta get back on track. Ragepost about mistreatment of Bucky, not how much Steve annoys me. Sorry. Anyway...

Bucky's drafted, accepts his shitty lot with a brave smile, and is shipped off to Europe, where he is captured by HYDRA and presumed by the Allies to be KIA. Instead, he's strapped down, tortured, and given the HYDRA version of the super serum against his will. Steve rescues him, and Bucky knows he can't leave his idiot friend to his own devices to get his head blown off, so he dives right back into the fray. And then he falls off a cliff, loses most of his left arm, and is declared dead...again. This one's pretty damn valid, though lol. Without the serum no one knew he'd been shot up with, there is no way he would have survived that fall.

Here is where Bucky's story gets truly heartbreaking: His autonomy, his ability to consent is stripped from him through electroshock torture/brainwashing. The trigger words are conditioned into him during this process, and boom. Ten words in Russian, and Bucky Barnes is gone. Even the confused, hurting shadow of him is gone, leaving only a perfectly obedient killing machine, with Bucky's pretty face. He's strong as all hell, though, so they can't keep him fully under their control for long, not without more torture, when the disorientation of being fucking frozen wears off on longer missions.

I cannot stress this point enough, guys: Bucky. Had. No. Choice. Not like the draft, where his choices (go and get shot at, refuse and go to jail, or dodge and run to Canada) just suck. No, he literally didn't have a choice. He had his ability to choose stripped from him. If that's too complex a concept to really sink in, try this: His brain was fucking raped. Repeatedly. For decades. Nothing the Winter Soldier ever did was Bucky's fault. Nothing. Ever. Not remotely, no matter how you fucking slice it. Bucky is not an assassin. I almost said "not a killer", but he was a soldier, and a sharpshooter. He definitely killed when he was himself, but that was in a war, not a series of assassinations.

So far, imo, so good. This is just a rundown of Bucky's pre-show backstory. I don't love what he had to suffer, but I do love how it was treated in the movies. People were afraid of him, but when they knew the whole situation, Steve, Nat, and Sam rallied behind him. Natasha had plenty of reason to want the Winter Soldier dead; he'd tried to kill her multiple times and almost succeeded. Sam had no reason to help Bucky at all; he didn't know him, didn't trust him, and again, TWS had tried to kill him. But he stood by Steve, and when Bucky showed the clear difference between himself and TWS, Sam stood by him, too, and fought alongside him.

And it's very realistic, imo, that Tony didn't give a single fuck that Bucky had no choice. He watched this man murder both of his parents on tape. If TWS had killed my dad and I saw proof of it, I'd try to kill Bucky, too. Grief wins out over logic. Most emotions usually do. And that's a very important point we're going to come back to in a few minutes.

Bucky was really only in like ten minutes at most of IW and Endgame, and for multiple reasons I hate those movies, so I'm just gonna skip them, kay? Kay. On to the main event!

Here's where I get pissed off. Even if I didn't have an unhealthy attachment to this character, or the depth of appreciation for his tragic backstory that I do, the lack of continuity between the movies and the show alone would still piss me off. It always does. Don't even get me started on Joss "Continuity? What continuity?" Whedon and his (iconic, but flawed) shows. Ahem. Back on track...

Let me just get one little thing out of the way real quick: I fucking LOVE The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I love it. This show amazed me when I first watched it, and I still love it after many more viewings lol. I have only ever watched it all the way through without skipping over as much John Walker shit as possible the one time lol but I love how Sam and Bucky interact, and I fucking adore how Sam's arc was treated. I just wish they'd show the same care and attention to Bucky.

Because what they did to Bucky in this show is a fucking travesty. There was a tiny ray of hope in the pilot, when he called out Dr. Bitchface for being a terrible shrink. I thought that would be the start of him realizing he needed to find someone else and ignore the damaging shit that woman was telling him. But...nope. No such luck.

The show really had a strong start, I'll give it that. We see Bucky having nightmares of his time as TWS and struggling to hide how his traumatic memories are affecting him as he tries to live in the world again. He befriends the father of one of HYDRA's victims, which can't be good for Bucky (and we're shown it's definitely not when he sees the shrine in Yori's home to his late son) but it's sweet, how he's trying to connect and reach out to someone who's hurting and lonely.

They drop the ball a little with the whole... Bucky can hack a fucking car, but can't figure out Tinder thing. Had they just run with the fandom interpretation of the tiger photos line, that it shows that Bucky is bi and left it at that, I'd have been okay with it (and no, that is not because I ship Sam/Bucky. it's because Bucky is and always has been a certified nerd who loves technology and has consistently shown very little issue learning to use new gadgets). The outdated flip phone he handed his terrible court-mandated shrink was a burner; I liked that theory when I read it, especially since it's the only time we see him even holding a phone that old lol. This all could have fit the "Bucky is a sassy bisexual nerd" narrative and it'd be okay. Instead, the director was like "NOOOOOO that line was just to show how old he is and how he can't figure out all this newfangled technology!" Woman, you had him remotely driving someone else's vehicle with a tablet. That is NOT a man who can't figure out a damn smart phone!

But that's just a minor annoyance. What fills me with absolute rage is how everyone - not just the shitty therapist who lashes out at and purposely triggers her traumatized patients, but EVERYONE - Sam, Zemo, people who should fucking know better ALL treat him like he's a psychopath and a ticking time bomb. Like he chose to take the serum and he chose to kill for HYDRA, and he's just seen the error of his ways. *barf*

Bucky in the movies is established to be a victim, through and through. His guilt over what he was forced to do is natural, and that he sees himself as a monster makes sense... but that doesn't mean it's correct. The one and only thing I ever liked about Steve Rogers is at least he got it. He pointed out that none of it was Bucky's fault, he tried to show him that he was worth saving. That's the other reason I refuse to talk about Endgame. This post will get a WHOLE LOT LONGER and a lot fucking angrier if I open that door.

Zemo supposedly knows everything about HYDRA and super soldiers... So why does he treat Bucky like he's a corrupt serial killer? (this, for the record, is why I don't like Zemo) Why does he never point out that Bucky was given the serum against his will, or that his actions, when he had control of them, proved that he was never corrupted? Bucky never wanted to become superhuman. Bucky didn't even want to fucking fight!

Sam, despite constantly resisting the label, is shown very clearly to be Bucky's friend. By episode 3, he cares. He worries about how Bucky is getting lumped in with the other super soldiers in Zemo's speech... But he never really defends him. He says "what about Bucky?" but he doesn't point out that Bucky's a good man, he's fought so hard to help people, he does everything he can to avoid killing... And that fucking speech in episode 5. I was with him on "you gotta stop looking to other people to tell you who you are." I was like "YEAH! Tell him, Sam! Bucky, you're WORTH SAVING, boo! Your value does not hinge on someone else's opinion of you!" And then... Sam dropped the ball.

He not only continued the disturbing pattern of victim-blaming in this show, and in Marvel/Disney properties in general, but he gave really dangerously bad advice! No one in their right mind, mental health professional or no, would EVER tell a traumatized former assassin (whether he was responsible for his actions or not) to go confront his victims' families out of the blue with no warning and no one to mediate and keep things from going to shit. Yori already knew his son had been murdered because he was in the "wrong place, wrong time." How is it being "of service" to tell him you're the one who killed him?! Remember how I said Tony's reaction to learning the full truth about his parents' deaths was valid and would be an important point later? Hi! Welcome to later. THAT is the natural reaction to facing the man who murdered your loved one(s). And even if Yori didn't get angry and lash out, HOW IS IT "HELPING" HIM OR BRINGING HIM "CLOSURE" TO KNOW THAT HIS FRIEND KILLED HIS FUCKING SON?!?!?! This man befriended him, bonded with him, watched him grieve... And now he's learning this is the man who caused all his pain and heartache to begin with? That is so toxic and psycho I just... I can't even... UGH.

And then there's the equally toxic and damaging "deeply traumatized person just needed a stern talking to and a hug to be ALL BETTER AGAIN" ending. I loved seeing Bucky happy and socializing, but it was too soon, and it was unearned. And it sends a fucking awful message to people actually struggling with PTSD, and to their loved ones who don't know how to help them. Heaping more blame on them and then hugging it out is NOT helpful!

This show could have been damn near perfect with just two changes. That's all. Just two. 1) Someone, anyone, bringing up the reasons why Bucky was never a villain in his presence. Someone being in his corner and reminding him, like Steve did, that it wasn't his fault and he's not going to "snap". 2) More time devoted to Bucky's healing. Actual fucking healing, not the shit they tried to pass off as a magic fix-all. He can have his happy barbecue moment, just don't frame it as "everything's great now!" Healing isn't linear, and there will be both good days and bad. Some of the most fragile people in the world have the brightest smiles.

If we get a season 2, which this amazing show absolutely deserves, and they address this stuff, all will be forgiven in my book. Expanding on his story and his journey toward healing will help to reframe that "happily ever after" garbage as something more realistic. But as it stands now... Fuck Marvel.

[slytherinsnekxvii]

let's talk about severus snape. he's one of the most controversial characters the internet has to offer, with several blogs, channels and pages dedicated specifically to hating him, despite him having one of the most—if not the most—intriguing character arcs the series has to offer. so, as a result of me coming across far too many of said blogs, channels or pages, here's an extremely detailed explanation of why i like him and think he's easily one of my favourite characters :)

1. he's not that bad of a teacher.

just so you know, i'm a teenage girl fresh out of high school. so, my experience with teachers? still keeps me up at night :)

my family is pretty strict about religion. you can guess what that means. anything that was magic-adjacent, especially something that, god forbid, had an entire school dedicated to witchcraft and wizardry was a hard no if i wanted to have any sort of freedom over the media i paid attention to, and any opportunity to go about my life without being monitored to make sure i wasn't suddenly possessed or something. thanks to this, i ended up secretly reading the philosopher's stone in my last year of primary school. i would've been 11 at the time, just about to turn 12, so a little bit older than harry and co. going on what i'd heard from those who had already read the series, i went in expecting to absolutely despise this man. i went in expecting to read a demon. i finished the book and came out thinking... that really wasn't that bad.

my mom found out, so i didn't get to read the rest of the series until i ended up on the executive committee for my school's book club and my friends were appalled that i'd only read the first book. at this point, i'm still expecting him to get worse and... he just doesn't. when i was in primary school, i had multiple teachers break wooden meter-long rulers across my classmates' backs. the first time it happened, i was in infant year 2 (about 6/7 years old). i had teachers who would insult us, based on anything from hygiene to behaviour to intelligence if you looked at them wrong. my sister (who was three years ahead of me) had a teacher who kept her in hours after school was over because the teacher had a written a note in her workbook upside down, and when my sister corrected her, the teacher made her rewrite it, turning the book each time the note was written so it would never be done the correct way.

in secondary school, i had teachers who would actively humiliate us in front of the class if we didn't do as well as they wanted. i had teachers who would throw markers and whiteboard erasers at us if we did something they didn't like during class. i had a teacher who looked for a friend of mine who was petrified of attention and then mercilessly picked on her until she went to the bathrooms to cry. these are the kinds of teachers that i was used to. so, when i read harry potter and read snape, who would have probably been one of the nicer teachers i met in my lifetime, i thought to myself, he's really not that bad. he's just... strict.

antis claim that he traumatised every kid that ever went through his class, that he straight up abused them and... no. he didn't. all of them are comfortable talking back, they talk during his class, no one trembles when he walks past, except for neville, who usually bore the brunt of snape's anger because he was consistently messing up in a potentially lethal class.

after school, i hated the thought of formal education, so now i'm working until i feel ready to do university. coincidentally, one of my jobs is teaching maths and english to kids writing the end of primary and secondary school exams. given the sheer amount of annoyance i feel sometimes, i actually respect him for not being more harsh with them, especially when they're all running off into danger or exploding cauldrons.

he really isn't that bad of a teacher, and we know this, since his classes' owl results are said to be consistently good.

plus, he was written in the 90's when all this was okay behaviour for teachers. hell, compared to some of the teachers in text, given that he goes out of his way to make sure the students are always protected, he's a lot better than most people give him credit for.

2. i relate to him.

come on, the man grew up to be a dramatic, queer-coded, petty bitch who wears all black all the time and likely has at least one mental disorder. i'm a petty, emo bisexual with (actually diagnosed, don't worry) depression and anxiety and I'm in a theatre group. what did you really expect from me?

on a serious note, both of the schools i went to were considered "prestigious". i got into my primary school because of a teacher's recommendation (she was a family friend). the second school i got into was because i scored ridiculously high on the placement test that would determine which school i went to. in primary school, i was the poor, really awkward, really smart kid who got left out of everything, and my best friend was the only kid who was worse off than me.

in secondary school, i was just as smart as everyone else... but i was still poorer, and still more awkward and still got left out of everything.

i got that isolated feeling, that feeling of not being good enough, that feeling where life always seems to have it out for you and that's even though i still got dealt a better hand than snape ever did. so, i get it. i'm never ever going to have it as bad as he did, but i acknowledge what he went through and i sympathise, because i have a chance, but it only ever got worse for him.

3. i genuinely enjoy his character.

this dude went through absolute hell for basically his entire life. the best years he had were probably when he was neck-deep in the group of people who hated witches and wizards like him, but somehow managed to treat him better than the good guys.

all of that, and he still manages to be one of the most entertaining motherfuckers in the whole series, with one of the most interesting character arcs ever. it's the witty lines, the sheer dynamic of his character, the change from the twitchy, hypervigilant kid from the slums to the adult that managed to spy on the Dark Lord himself and save the wizarding world in the process, while still being a hot mess of a person. it's the managing to get shit done while everybody hated him and everything was going to hell. it's the everything, and i haven't even talked about how badass he is.

come on, potions prodigy turned master, exemplary duellist (cough, cough, winning 4-on-1 vs McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout and Slughorn, and leaving a scratch on nobody, while managing to not take a single hit himself, cough, cough), spellcrafter, spy and one of the only wizards to ever figure out unaided flight. dark arts master, proficient at healing (dumbledore would've been dead a lot sooner, if it weren't for him, most likely). he's one of the most powerful wizards of his time. i've said that any universe where he's actually a bad guy—or just legitimately loyal to the death eaters—is a universe where voldemort wins and this is why. if he was motivated by literally anything other than lily, the wizarding world was more than likely fucked.

the point is, i just think he's neat.

4. spite.

every time i appreciate snape, a snater feels like someone is walking over their grave. every time i appreciate snape, a snater turns blue out of sheer rage. every time i appreciate snape, a snater loses their mind looking for their non-existent reading comprehension.

the spite in my veins is tempered only by the broth of instant ramen and ungodly amounts of sugar, and i'm going to use them all in my mission to cause antis pain when they refuse to acknowledge their lack of critical thinking and analysis skills.

so, yeah. why do i actually like snape?

tl;dr: he's not that bad. for a teacher written in the 90's and compared to teachers i've had within the decade, the guy's just strict. sure, he's a dick (who i personally think is hilarious), but he always makes sure the students are safe and he didn't leave any lasting effect on any of the students. he's really not that bad of a teacher. and hell, he's not even that bad of a person. i fully admit that he was an asshole and i entirely believe he was prone to self-destructive behaviour, but he still tried to atone for his mistakes and he did, is the thing, even though the odds were stacked more or less completely against him. i like him because he entertains me, and because i relate to him, as a teen who went through some shit and probably would have joined up with some bad people if it weren't for my friends and family, and as a teacher who really can't stand my students sometimes. i also like him because it irritates people who don't like him :)

also, istg if any of you respond to this with "bUt hE was ObseSsED with LiLY and just WAnTEd to FUCK hEr," i'm crawling into your bedroom window with the most unrealistic, mangled interpretations of your favourite characters and making sure they haunt you in your dreams. meet me in the fuckin' pit, babe. reread the series, actually think about it and come with receipts that aren't Voldemort, because i don't think you want to have the same opinion as the character who canonically doesn't understand love, now, do you, sweetheart? when you do that, then, and only then, will i consider entertaining your bullshit :)

that's about it from me, thanks for reading!

[callisto-rants]

Starting a new ✨series✨ that no one asked for! ( ꈍᴗꈍ)

Callisto-Rants presents...

Here's my Two Cents

Where we just throw down our two cents on how we would change a series to make it better, in our own personal opinion.

[You can Block this tag if you're not interested in this series: #Here's Our Two Cents]

Here's my Two Cents

Yarichin Bitch Club.

Ever since I had the misfortune of having that opening theme song stuck in my head because of countless memes and tiktok edits. . . I have wished for days to have the ability to create a time machine to prevent myself from saying. . .

"okay, fine I'll bite the bullet and check out the source material."

Now if you're reading this and thinking, "huh. I never heard of this series..." let me just tell you, GOD I WISH I WAS YOU RIGHT NOW.

No one was going to tell me this BL Manga about a "pHoTogRaPhY cLuB" wasn't completely INSANE? I was just supposed to find out Three Volumes Later??

Now some of y'all who have read the source material might be thinking. . .

"Okay Callisto, get over it it's obviously supposed to be a comedy it's not meant to be taken seriously 🙄"

And to that I say... I mean I guess??? But do we really need all of THAT to make it a comedy?? I feel like you could still have an entertaining comedy BL Manga without 90% of the shit that goes on in that series..... But that's just ✨my two cents✨ take it or leave it.

FIRST THINGS FIRST, here's all the stuff I'd automatically remove from this series off the bat.

💀 The Gang Bangs.

💀 Teacher x Student Relationships.

💀 In fact all instances of unconsensual acts & sexual assault committed in this manga. Throw all of that away.

💀 the fact that the term Bisexual was used as a replacement for the term switch, and had nothing to do with the sexual orientation itself whatsoever.

💀 The High School Setting.

💀 Whatever the fuck Yuri was on.

💀 90% of the hyper sexualized traits these characters had.

Now here's what I'd change to make it better... Basically here's an AU of what if it was actually a normal photography club....

Actually make it a fucking Photography Club. Not a sex club that's in a fuckin HIGH SCHOOL. Hell, you could just throw this in a college setting too, for more mature themes.

Main character, Takashi Toono a college student that's trying to get out of his comfort zone more. So he decides to join the photography club, because he thinks it's not demanding to require anything of him compared to any other club on campus. He knows completely NOTHING about photography, and doesn't have any passion for the art media. His Character growth would be learning to appreciate the art media While learning what it means to him, as well as who he wants to be as he enters the adult world as a young adult.

Yuu Kashima, can stay as Takashi's love interest. Also, I feel like all the members should have a specific style of taking photos that correlates with their personality in some way. Yuu's photography style would be something the lines of Candid photography which is a type of photography style that's main focus is to take photos in the moment or in surprise. Something he has already done when he took that photo of Takashi. I also feel like Yuu would be the one to keep pushing Takashi to love photography, and understand it's more than snapping a photo.

Kyousuke Yaguchi, can stay as the Love Rival for Yuu Kashima and overall keep his personality? It was actually pretty interesting and I liked his Character dynamics with everyone else. Kyousuke Yaguchi can also stay as the outsider that directly / indirectly influences Everyone else in the club. Causing Takashi to explore his feelings and expand his social group, and make him think about what he wants to capture in his photos. Overall the same interaction between Kyousuke & Yuu Kashima with their rivalry and brotherly relationship at it's breaking point. As well as, Kyousuke and Yui's relationship being tense with miscommunication.

Yui Tamura, I imagine Yui's photography style would be more of Adventure (capturing shots in the great outdoors, usually involving extreme sports; mountain-climbing, skiing, kayaking, sky diving, etc) & Sports Photography. Which could create interesting interactions between Kyousuke and Yui. Cue Yui trying to cover up the fact that, every time the soccer club commissions Yui to take some photos of their club activity to promote their club, all of Yui's photos are of Kyousuke playing soccer. Causing Yui to complain to Kyousuke to get out of his shots and that he's ruining them by being in all of them. So, Kyousuke just shouts back "then stop following me around with your camera, DUMBASS". Just imagine Them bickering, because Yui 100% did not delete the photo he captured of Kyousuke getting knocked out by a soccer ball to the face.

Itsuki Shikatani would definitely be in the club, but only because he prefers to have his photos be taken, more than he likes taking photos himself. He would probably be a cross dresser, who enjoys dressing up in feminine articles of clothing and posing for photos. Everyone on campus who doesn't know Itsuki personally, always asks who the beautiful woman in these photos are, the club president and vice President always just says it's one of their cousins that happen to be in town. If Itsuki had to have a style of photography, it would probably be fashion.

Toru Fujisaki. . . This one is difficult only because his Character is purely centered around Yuki's Character. . . So I'm going to take some creative liberties here. . . Probably really insecure about himself, because he feels like he's a wall flower that's really forgettable, that no one cares about. Although, it's mostly because he's shooting himself in the foot by not letting one have the opportunity to get to know him to give him a chance, in the first place. Until, he meets Yuki who makes him realize that not everyone sees him as a wall flower and someone can notice his nicer qualities about himself that he's hiding away. Toru's Character development in this AU, would be for for him to learn to love himself more and try to trust people to accept him. As well as to expand his social circle with the support of not only Yuki, but the Photography Club as well. At first I bet, he would only feel comfortable with Yuki taking his photos and modeling only for him, but over time he'd let the other club members take his photo when he gets more confident in himself. While also, developing his own style of photography, that isn't just "cute photos of Yuri", it would probably be Still Life or Portrait.

Ayato Yuri, okay first. . . I'm still not over the fact that this boy was written like a deranged feral child, that was given access to a pornhub account way too early in life. While being dropped on his head several times, before and after his first words. Anyhow. . . I feel like Yuri would fit the trope of the genius, that no one understands in any capacity. His mind is 10 steps ahead of everyone else and he forgets to slow down and explain what the fuck he's talking about, when he goes into a passionate rant about photography. With endless rambles about golden ratio, gold lighting and blue lighting, and how he needs these specific props, that don't seem to fit the theme of the photo at all to make it perfect. But despite that, his photos always come out beautifully. No one can deny that his methods might be extremely weird, but they always work out way too well to give anyone the opportunity to chastise him. Anyone trying to work with Yuri often leaves the experience with a beautiful photo in hand, but an enormous headache. Even members within the photography club can't keep up with Yuri most of the time either, he's often in his own little world that just makes sense to only him. He can be a eccentric and passionate about his hobby and goofy to not make people feel too uncomfortable with the huge distance he unintentionally places between himself and others when he doesn't bother to slow down for anyone. But, he still has a good heart to make sure everyone gets a piece of art that'll always be memorable to them. Additionally, with that being said I feel like Toru would be the few people that would consistently attempt to keep up with Yuri, when he's a light year away from everyone else in his rambles. Toru wouldn't shut down and show disinterest in what Yuri says when he can no longer keep up, he's always being supportive and encouraging Yuri to continue because he knows it makes him happy to be able to express his passion. And sometimes, Yuri will pause and explain a bit to let Toru keep up with him, because he just truly appreciates someone trying to get closer to him, without making him feel bad. I would say Yuri is a jack of all trades when it comes to Photography styles. There isn't a single style he is terrible at, but he truly excels at Abstract Photography.

Koshiro Itome I think Koshiro would fit the silent type trope, but with a lot on his mind. Always over thinking things, and although he looks calm his mind is always buzzing with 500 things at once. Because, of this the only way he can find some semblance of peace is by going out for a nature walk and letting the environment take his mind off things. He's always worries about deadlines for projects, meeting up with clients face to face for the first time, whether or not a company will like his photos he submitted, if his boyfriend Akemi is okay, what if he doesn't find anything to take a picture of or if he's missing the perfect shot right now, will the club be okay after they all graduate, what else can be learn to improve his skills etc etc. Akemi can always tell when he's actually calm and when he's just zoned out and drowning in his own worries behind his calm demeanor. Luckily for Akemi, he knows exactly what to do to make him feel better, like a life boat to his pleas for help in the vast ocean of his thoughts. Koshiro is 100% the mom friend in the club, always helping newbies out on how to properly take care of their equipment, and the general basics, stopping people from bickering and carrying around a Mary Poppins bag of useful items. "Damn I forgot to bring my infrared lens with me!" "It's okay I brought a spare, here you go." Koshiro's photography style would be Nature & Wild life, cue everyone wondering how the hell he managed to capture a photo of baby bear and it's mother so close up with such clarity with the equipment he has on him. It should be impossible there's no way he could it's just unlikely, but all Koshiro does in response is just shrugging calmly "I just slowly walked up to them, and took some photos and went my way after I was done, they weren't bothered at all." At first no one believes him, until they see the next photo of him petting the mother bear, and within the next photo of him holding the baby bears paw. I like to think Akemi is always bragging at how his boyfriend is basically a Disney Prince, with the way animals just trust him enough to let Koshiro approach to take the photos. Of course Akemi has the proof that his Boyfriend is not making any of these up. With photo evidence he had taken from a incredibly safe distance away, of Koshiro just interacting with wildlife at such a close distance. Because, Akemi was not in fact gifted the ability of a Disney prince, to be doing that shit that Koshiro pulls on a daily basis. I feel like because of this Akemi can be a bit over protective of Koshiro, always telling him to text him before he goes to work and he gets back home, so he knows a feral bear didn't devour his boyfriend in the woods. He tries his best to join Koshiro while he works so he can be at peace of mind that Koshiro is in fact safe, but they both know it's very difficult for Koshiro to focus. When his boyfriend is being incredibly cute how could he remember he's here to take photos of the wild life and not his boyfriend? That and Akemi always accidentally scares away the wildlife, when he accidentally reads the animals body language wrong as any attempt to devour his boyfriend. Akemi will lose 25 years of his life with amount of false alarms, he has encountered in those damn woods.

Keiichi Akemi, Akemi is definitely one of those smug bastards, that has an ulterative motive or an ace up his sleeve. Appearing sweet and kind until you realize it was a facade. But one way or another you find yourself wrapped up in his convoluted plans, where you're either in his photoshoot as a model or you're carrying all his equipment, while he goes from one job to the next. Akemi's photography style would be Wedding Photography & Landscape something he definitely would've picked up from the countless outings he had with Koshiro in the outdoors. Akemi's friends are almost always married or paired up together, and that's no coincidence. This man is a match-making demon, a hopeless romantic who loves to see a budding romance finally bloom. So, he can snag a fat check when they thank him for brining them together and hire him as the official wedding photographer. His intuition is never wrong about the perfect pairings and how to push the right buttons to move things along, without getting directly involved until the right time comes. Something, that will be a pain in Toono's ass down the line as he stays in the Photography Club.

Overall, I feel like this could've been a really nice BL Manga which was a love letter to the art media of Photography. As Toono figures out what Photography means to him and how he wants to use it to express his feelings. "Why do you take photos? What do you want to say in these photos and tell people without the ability of using your words?" I feel like at first Toono, would just be confused "it's just a photo what's so special about it? You take it as a cool momento for something."

But, as time goes on, and he learns why everyone in the club enjoys photography and why they're here, he learns it's more than that. Whether it be to vent something you're unable to express in words, express your love for something or someone, to tell a story, to inspire others, to feel free, to share something with someone. All these different forms of expression, will let Toono figure out what he wants from photography and how he plans on expressing it.

Also instead of the whole "have sex with someone in one month or we gang bang you against your will" dilemma. . . I feel like another suspenseful situation could have been, "Create a photo album, that will impress all of us in one month, or you have to help us all out with our next projects." Which at first doesn't sound terrible, until you remember...

Yui is a thrill seeker, and would probably push you off a cliff to snag a cool photo. Or force you to be his pack mule as you climb up serval mountains.

Itsuki would force you to cross dress and model different fashion styles to make you look like a clown for his own amusement. All the while he revels in your shame, and points out how these colors don't suit you at all, but ignores the fact he's the one who put you in that outfit in the first place.

Yuri is such a wild card that you honest to God don't know what the fuck will happen to you, it'll be like being on an acid trip the whole time. And not knowing what will happen brings you more fear than knowing what will.

Koshiro would probably bring you to a wolf den full of hungry ravenous wolves, and let you accidentally get eaten alive by a pack of wolves. While he takes pictures of puppies, without a care in the world.

Akemi... Akemi just scares Toono, he seems like the safest bet out of everyone else. But Toono knows better to trust that sweet smile. Toono would be safer walking into Satan's house than spend a day with Akemi at work. Whatever he would have planned for them if he were to lose this challenge would not be good for his sanity. He hates how he knows Akemi wants just that for Toono to know he's not going to be safe either. Akemi would probably make him cry with prying questions about his romance life. While hitting too close to home with all his assumptions about him that he can't argue back. It's losing battle from there on out.

The only problem for Toono is Everyone in this club is so different, that it's almost impossible to be able to impress them all. None of them agree, which style is better or having almost anything in common photography style wise. Toono can't just half-heartedly replicate anyone's style either, he's going to actually try and fail miserably to understand this art media better, like everyone else. I think after losing the challenge and spending time with everyone, Toono would come to really like the club and everyone else in it.

And that's my ✨two cents✨ on how this story could've been better if it didn't focus too much on the whole pwp aspect.

Take it or leave it.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

You know what really grinds my gears? People are always accusing Jim of contradicting himself (with no evidence btw, because from what I've seen Jim is the most consistent person in the Freddieverse,) when Miss Mary Austin is literally the QUEEN of contradiction.

"I had no idea how much Freddie cared about me until after he died and I read his interviews. Oh, but we were totally married!"

"Freddie and I lived our vows, we could trust each other with everything. But I fully expected him to leave me eventually for another woman."

"I was shocked when Freddie told me he was gay because I was 100% convinced that he was cheating on me with a woman. But I also had a feeling he was gay two years before he told me!"

"No, you guys can't have your cats because I'm going to keep them here in Garden Lodge where they belong. Well, I might get rid of two. No, you can't have the two I'm giving away, even though they're the ones you bought. I'm going to give them to strangers, because that's totally what Freddie would have wanted. Hey, it's not my fault! I can't handle all these cats! But I'm going to take the neighbour to court over Oscar for God knows what reason!"

"Freddie was the greatest person I've ever known. But he totally knew he was ill in 1986, which means he deliberately infected Jim with HIV, lol."

"I was the only person who didn't want him for his money, everyone else was just a leech who used him for booze and tickets. I mean, I know I didn't fall in love with him until three years into our relationship, which is coincidently when his fame peaked, but that's just a coincidence! Oh, and of course I let him spoil me and buy me things, but that's different!"

"When Freddie came out to me, he couldn't get the words out and I had to say "are you trying to tell me you're gay?" and he said, "yes, we'll leave it at that." Oh no, wait, he didn't struggle to get the words out. He was very direct with me and was totally comfortable saying it. Actually, no, what he said was, 'I think I'm bisexual,' and I said, 'I think you're gay,' and we hugged. Wow, it's so hard to remember such a poignant moment in my bestie's life! But all that matters is he didn't give me AIDS, so who cares?"

👑 All hail the Queen of Contradiction 👑

Tsk tsk, the fake proof of Freddie's non-existent bisexuality can never be wrong. Only the Irish gay man can be picked apart and criticized

[robotslenderman]

Someone on Reddit was asking why labels were important and I went into a whole goddamn essay because my Vyvanse is kicking in.

TLDR - Labels are important for communication. Without communication, we are isolated. Sexuality is so fundamental to our experiences as human beings that being able to describe those experiences succinctly can mean the difference between feeling isolated and feeling connected. Also sneering at ace people for microlabels dismisses the asexual experience as so unimportant that we SHOULDN'T be able to describe our exact experience of it, when discussing asexuality often requires these labels because of how varied and complicated the asexual experience is.

I've been waffling on the fence about microlabels but I've decided that no, microlabels aren't overthinking it, for the reasons I discuss below. In the past I've reblogged things saying that microlabels are about isolation instead of connection, that further dividing our sexuality into smaller and smaller boxes creates increasingly exclusive clubs.

I no longer believe that. I believe it does the opposite. I believe that being in touch with your sexuality just as much as you need to helps you connect to others even outside your microlabel, not just within it, because then it makes it clearer to everyone involved what experiences you have in common and makes it easier to set aside the ones you don't.

You don't understand how important labels are until you've struggled without one. It's human nature to use language to describe our experiences, and when we don't have the language to do so it is stressful and isolating. Because language is how we connect to other people, so when we can't use easy language to summarise our experiences, it becomes isolating.

My personal experience - I struggled with my asexuality for years, even before I began to realise that I was asexual. Even once I started letting myself admit it, I didn't feel that the word "asexual" was enough. Sure, I could explain to people "I'm asexual and don't want to have sex, but I love sex in theory and in novels and I love reading about romance and daydreaming about them, but don't want a relationship." That's a very specific type of asexuality that people don't think of when they hear "asexual". People hear "asexual" and think "doesn't like sex."

But people use labels because others don't want to stick around and listen to your dissertation on what your sexuality actually is, they want bite sized information as soon as possible and sometimes YOU want to describe who you are without spending a ton of time explaining it. It's not just because I want to understand myself, it's because I want other people to, too, and labels is how we communicate. It's the fundamentals of how language works. Labels are so important that they consist of two entire grammatical categories - adjectives and nouns.

So when I found out about aegosexuality? I was like "oh thank god, I'm not a broken asexual, I'm this specific TYPE of asexual."

Most people haven't heard of aegosexuality. I used to actually roll my eyes at microlabels like that, thinking it was needlessly self absorbed and pretentious. But now I get it. Now I have the ABILITY to summarise my experiences in one word, and it turns out that having that ability to use language efficiently to describe myself has brought me quite a significant amount of peace. Because when I tell people I'm asexual, they often have a certain idea in their heads of what asexuality is, and I don't fit under most of that. Many asexuals don't, because asexuality is the most complicated sexuality there is.

But god is it fucking exhausting to say "I'm asexual" and then have to hold a fucking Q and A session about how I'm asexual and yes, I really am asexual even though I'm not adhering to someone else's idea of what asexuality is. By knowing I'm aegosexual, I can say, "oh, you're thinking of X type of asexuality, which is when you experience Y. I'm aegosexual, which means that I still get horny and love sex in fiction, but I don't personally want to experience it, unlike X type of sexuality which doesn't like sex at ALL."

And then people get it! They don't get "I'm asexual, but different." That just makes them think I'm not actually asexual, or that I'm an allo in denial who needs therapy to be "fixed". They get "I'm asexual, but this specific type of asexuality that has a name." People respond to names. People respond to labels. They GET labels, even ones they haven't heard of, even ones they roll their eyes at because they think we're over thinking it because they assume that because their sexuality is so fucking simple, everyone else's must be too.

I still tell people I'm asexual because a lot of the time my type of asexuality isn't actually important. Actually, most of the time I tell them I'm queer and leave it vague because queer is a wonderful umbrella word and my sexuality isn't anyone's business. For me, "queer" is often enough because it communicates that my experience isn't a straight one, and that's usually all people need to know.

But having that label just on *hand* that describes my experiences, and having the option to use it to people who do know what it means, and being able to hand it to people who are lost like I used to be lost -

That's powerful. It's important. It *matters*.

It's not like needing a label for yourself because you prefer pineapple on pizza, this is sexuality, this is the kind of thing that makes or breaks your experiences with other human beings. When you're straight your sexuality is so simple and easy that you don't even need to think about it. You're straight. That's easy. And as homosexuality becomes more accepted I'm seeing baby gays start to take that attitude as well because they're gay and as homosexuality becomes less stigmatised, it's allowed to become more simple.

But other sexualities don't have that luxury.

Bisexuality and pansexuality are more complicated because often people experience a split attraction model, or they don't have equal attraction to different genders and they're not fully comfortable describing themselves as bi or pan because again, people hear "bisexual" or "pansexual" and assume that you experience the same amount of attraction to different genders and it's important to be able to communicate to people that no, you don't. The whole point of using a word is so that the other people understand you - if they don't understand the word, they don't understand YOU. So I think bisexuality and pansexuality is also a spectrum in that there's different types of both depending on how your attraction works, and that it would help bi and pan people to have more specific words - using bisexual and pansexual as an umbrella term much like queer and asexual - to allow them to better communicate their experiences.

And asexuality is, I think, the most complicated sexuality of all. It's based not just on who you're attracted to, like other sexualities, but if you're attracted at ALL. No other sexuality has a footnote attached of "but this one likes sex" or "this one doesn't like sex" or "this one is indifferent to sex". Even bisexuality and pansexuality don't. It also has the contradictory feature of involving some level of attraction - demisexuals and grey aces experience attraction! Just only under specific circumstances. The split attraction model is also much more significant; whereas some bisexual people are explicitly homo- or heteroromantic, many asexuals are not aromantic, and many aromantic people are not asexual. This is far more common with us.

It's also the ONLY sexuality where the split attraction communities are actively hostile to each other. Aromantic people have lately been slinging a lot of shit at asexual people because in their need to be told apart from us (I say "us" even though I'm aromantic myself because I'm also asexual), some have gone to the extreme of showing outright hostility to asexual people and show offence for being associated with us at all. When I thought that I was bi, for example, I NEVER saw this kind of shit between homoromantic bis, heteroromantic bis and biromantic bis. Only the asexual and aromantic community has this hostility.

I respect that aros don't want people to mistake them for asexual people and that's important for the same reasons I've been discussing in this entire essay, but here I'm referring to outright hostility aimed AT asexuals because of other people's failures to understand them. "Aromanticism isn't the same as asexuality" is not hostility. Treating asexual people like garbage - or even aroace people because they dare to exist as asexual AND aromantic - is hostility. This hostility is rising.

So asexuality is deeply complicated, and when you have completed concepts, you need simple labels to communicate that. And frankly - allos don't fucking get it. Bi and pan people do to a certain level, but their sexuality, while more complicated than being gay or straight, is still not as complicated as asexuality. That's not a bad thing, having a more complicated sexuality doesn't make us superior, nor is complication the same thing as depth. Other sexualities are not shallow for lacking the same level of complication, nor should they be taken less seriously.

But it does mean each sexuality has nuance to it that you can't understand without being that sexuality, and it's vital not to fall into the same trap straight people do that your experience of sexuality applies to everyone else, of assuming that because your sexuality isn't complicated to you that it must be the same for everyone else or we're overthinking it. And it's important for us to be able to succinctly sum up our sexuality so that we can share our experiences.

People who've never faced that don't understand how important it is to feel connected to people by being able to efficiently describe yourself. To use language is to connect, to use language and labels is to communicate. Without that, it's an isolating experience, simply because people do not fucking want to hear you bring out a PowerPoint presentation to talk about yourself when they just want one word. And when you're talking about something that defines your human experience, that makes your ability to communicate it THE difference between being isolated and disconnected, and feeling human.

Having different levels of labels helps, too. Sure, I'm aegosexual, but even if most people knew what that meant, most of the time it's completely fucking irrelevant. Most of the time all I need to do is say I'm queer - because I'm communicating that my experience isn't a straight one (or a cis one, if you're queer because of your gender). Sometimes I need to say I'm aroace, or just asexual, because that's what the conversation calls for. It's only when discussing asexuality itself that I actually need to say I'm aegosexual - but that's important, too.

Discussion of asexuality is no less important than being able to say I'm ace, or that I'm queer, and a lot of allos think that distinguishing yourself from straight people is important, that distinguishing yourself from non straight people is important, but asexuality itself is so unimportant that we're not allowed to distinguish ourselves among each other. And that's just another form of aphobia. It doesn't mean that we're going "ew, we're not THOSE asexuals" like I've been seeing in the arosexual community lately, it's being able to say "this is my experience of asexuality, so I'm viewing our discussion through THIS lens, whereas you might not."

And it's so fucking typical that allos think that that shouldn't be important to us. I regret ever thinking the same.

At the end of the day, we need language. It describes our experiences, and without being able to describe those experiences, we are isolated. We need language and labels to connect.

[popculturebuffet]

The Owl House: Enchanting Grom Fright: Happy Valentine’s Gays

Happy Valentine’s Day owl ladies, gentleman and non-binary folks! It’s time to finish off this holiday in proper style with a LONG overdue review of enchanting Grom Fright and even longer overdue coverage of the Owl House.  The Owl House was one of the best debuts of last year if not THE best, only in contention because Close Enough also started last year and looks to surpass regular show in terms of quality. But with stunning animation, tons of representation, and colossal worldbuilding. And given how i’m on record for thinking Star Vs went so far down the tubes they bumped into where Cthulu is sleeping, it’s nice to have another magic based show that seems to be on the right track: carefully building i’ts world, supporting cast and for today’s topic main romance. It also rather than just obliquely hint one character was bi and the other pan, actually goes out of it’s way to have a bisexual protaginst with a gay love intrest. As my good friend @jess-the-vampire has brought up quite a bit, star had plnety of options. .but no willingness to actually campaign for any queer rep, the way Gravity Falls head Alex Hirsch tried to, he still gets credit for trying, and Owl House creator Dana Terrace gets full credit for. 

Terrace got her start working on Gravity Falls in line production before working her way up to directing for ducktales, being instrumental in how Webby was animated and how she moves and acts, and being the director for several classic season one episodes including “Woo-Hoo!”, “The Spear of Selene” , “Day of the Only Child!” which was one of my faviorites from season 1 and “The Beagle Birthday Massacre!”. And while I can’t 100% confirm she’s the only part responsible for starting Weblena, given she was director on an episode where a lot of the romantic subtext was in the visuals, she certainly helped so thank you Dana. Thank you a lot. Their adorable. Point is she’s a talented lady and wasn’t satisfied with directing, so she pitched her own show, combining tons of ides and stuff including of all things, Pokemon Red. I checked the article wikipedia had sourced, it was one of her happy childhood memories as it was one of the last things her dad gave her. Awwwwwww. That’s as sweet as it is painful. She’s also currently dating Alex Hirsch, something I was entirely unaware of but find also adorable. Point is i’m glad I looked into her as she’s a very nice person, and very much my kind of weirdo and i’m happy for her sucess and her singuarly weird show that sprung from that sucess. 

Now that part of it’s out of the way the episode itself was an uphill battle as you’d expect. As anyone familiar with this blog is aware, but just in case your new, you tend to hear me bitching about Disney’s handling of queer represntation a LOT

For the most part Disney’s pretty bad at it: There was the string of “FIRST GAY CHARACTER IN AN X” they had going for a while.. that consisted of a character I dind’t realize was gay, a kiss I didn’t see, and a talk with a character who I honestly wouldn’t of been looking for had disney not patted themselves on the back with some giant sized hands because htey saved some pym particles for that occasion. Ducktales was unable to have Penumbra come out as gay more clearly because I don’t know Ducks can’t be day.. but they can be IMPLIED to be gay or pansexual as hard as the crew possibly can so they win anyway. Pixar was able to have a gay lead character for one of it’s sparks shorts out and even focused on him coming out of the closet and it’s very good and something I WILL give Pixar credit for... but not Disney Plus who go out of their way to not mention the lead being gay.. despite the fact the short opens with a gay space cat riding a gay space dog out of a rainbow and then it being revaled our lead is in a relationship not long into the short. My point is the idiots who won’t watch this for having gay characters are just going to turn it off, who cares what they think, why are you like this Disney. They need to do better, and be better and i’m getting tired of this shit.

That being said... this episode is a step in the right directoin as despite having to get past one obstructive asshole, not her words but damn if it isn’t the truth, as the rest of hte execs were fine with having a gay character, Terrace fought hard for it and WON, having a clearly gay character, and a clear road to a gay romace as the lead one, all because she wanted some representation in her works. So to honor this, I present this review in honor of love, effort and saying screw you to not having represntation because money. Join me under the cut and allt hat. 

We open in the owl house, in the owl house, duck dodge push and shove, it’s how we show our love in the.. you get the point. Luz is learning yet another Rune, this time plant runes.. and already something I love about the series pops up: the fact Luz’s rise in skill is gradual but noticable. Each spell noticably improves in potency with time,  going from simple lights to shaping them into simple constructs, and learning to control or time her spells and glpyhs so they launch she she says so, with each one getting more powerful the more she learns. And on top of that osmething I just noticed on rewatch of this episode is her tecnique in finding them evolved, something I dind’t notice the first time because I hadn’t fully caught up and checked this one out to see if Disney would actually let them go through with it.. and they did. Point is her first spell is found by accident, her second by realizing how her magic works fundemntally, both require skilled deduction and on the fly thinking and casting, so she’s already pretty skilled.. but now sh’es ACTIVELY seeking out a new spell here for the first time. She knows how she gets them, she knows each school is tied to a form, and she likely got the plant from williow since that’s her thing and she’s a saint. A demon but also a saint. They can have those too. It’s what I assume relicor is. 

I miss that goblin demon bat man. Point is it shows an evolution in Luz’s thinking: while it’s a subtle thing she took a more proactive approach this time even if it took a lot of practice.. and it pay soff as by the time of her next rune, while it’s once again sorta handed to her she has less time to learn it, almost none, and finds it singed onto a ball.. and learns it effortlessly to the point where by the next episode it’s a crucial plot point. IT’s subtle but clever character progression, and stuff I really enjoy, showing our hero going from a bit inept but not helpless or incomptient.. to a force to be reckconed with and far more clever and strategic than yo’ud expect given her sometimes reckless and almost always happy go lucky attitude. 

Luz worries teaching King about the internet was a bad idea because he gets excited about a literal cat fight which .. yeah... it was a bad idea but not because of that.. but because next he finds someone saying the earth is flat and she wisely yanks it away. It’s.. very sad that the absolutley maddening and easily debunked flat earth theory is still RELATIVLEY more sane than the stuff we’ve had pop up during the trump era and the cornoavirus pandemic. 

But one of the main conlficts of the episode pops up as Luz’s mom messages her and Luz can’t bring herself to tell her anything and just sends a thumbs up.  I do think this episode helps even things from the pilot a bit as it was a bit lopsided: While I got that Camillia was genuinely struggling with how to deal with Luz, and was offered an out and had to take it... the fact she sees NO problem with the normalcy camp, which comes off intentioanlly or not a sa parallel to conversion camps or camps to make autistic kids “Normal”. And as someone whose both bisexual and autistic, I naturally relate to luz way more as someone whose intrests sometimes just don’t quite fit with everyone else, and who dosen’t get how bad some of their actions were.  THat’s why this episode feels like a necessary course correction: Luz is shown to genuinely love her mama and feel guilty.. but we see camilia genuinlely loves and supports her daughter a bit more. While it was clear from the pilot this shows it more, with her genuinely just wanting to know her daughter’s okay and checking up on her, and giving me the feeling that possible consequences or no if something bad WAS happening or she didn’t hear from her for a long time, she would’ve drove up there to get her. It feels like the writers realized the implications they accidently created and wanted to fix it, though I can’t say for certain. But if so good on you for course correcting, not every show does that. 

But King encourages her, telling her she’s doing the right thing by lying and to “trust the demon on your shoulder”. Keep this in mind for later, but that joke is great on it’s own. But soon i’ts time for school and Hooty.. barfs out Luz’s books for her. 

I haven’t been this disturbed since.. (Looks at the clock) About 2 maybe three hours ago when I watched a man have, if apparently shorter than the oriiginal cut as I wanted to see everyone else’s reactions dammit, sex with hiis car which was possesed by the mad ghost of his dead wife. Because that’s the kind of stuff i’m into when i’m not reviewing stuff. And before that Tinky.. just everything about tinky. 

I do not have enough time to get into TInky here or why he exestially horrifies me. Or why Jeff blim is a living god. I will save that for a proper review if I have the time tomorrow. Point is I saw a lot today and that still tops it. Willow and Gus are likewise grossed out and want to leave. 

Cut to school where Luz wonders what’s with all the decorations.. that remind me of this honestly

And frankly given the whole state of the boiling isles it REALLY wouldn’t surprise me if the decorations were indeed well cooked faces. But i’ts Grom time, which means elaborate gromposals (Some Dude asks Skara out with a beating heart and an elaborate medical proposal.. which.. points for effort. And for using an actual heart. Couldn’t get one for mine. ), dancing and someone being chosen for Grom Queen. WHich Willow hints isn’t as nice as that sounds. Before we can get into that though Amity bumps into them and gets into a tizzy before meekly greeting “Luz.. and Co”. which.. not going to lie.. is my faviorite gag of the season. Just htw way she adds them and just the way Willow and Guz both smile widely at it as if to say “That’s us!”. Amity drops a note and snatches it back. This will be important later, you all know why, point is Amity becomes Grom Queen.. and is heavily depressed with Luz following her to find out why.  At the gym.. she does indeed ifnd out why: Turns out Grom is not some mutation of an earthname but is based around a horrifying entity lurking beneath the isles, Gromethious the Fear Bringer, who emerges from his slumber once a year and must be fought back and brings out his target’s greatest fears. Just like groundhog day only with less time loops and rodent abuse. Amity is scared of hers, and i’ll obviously get into this more later, and Luz simply suggests asking bump to opt out and Amity appricates the support. Awwww. 

Luz heads home and we find out Eda is chaperoning and King is mcing. Eda is also rocking a suit. Just damn girl, damn. But Luz considers taking her place.. and gets laughed at, with Eda assuming she’ll have to save her and King just being kind of a dick. I mean he’s a loveable thoroughly cuddly dick but he’s still a dick... just more like a stuffed plushie of one.  So basically exactly like Tinky. Look I mention him more than once in this review he dosen’t put me in the bastard box. It’s a great system.  Naturally this makes Luz more determined than ever to prove herself and she finds Amity in the night, with Amity having been unable to get out of it.. and Bumps a resonable guy, he just wants a substitute and no one wants the job.. except Luz who galdly volunteers and insists ntohing scares her before the giant spider on the back of her head proves otherwise. Because of course it does, spiders are fucking terrifying. Kill then all.. except the pokemon ones. Galvaltula are sweethearts. As are Ariadoses. Sweethearts who can elctorcute or poison you but still. 

So the next way Luz begins preparing.. and by that I mean it’s time for training. Sadly we don’t get an episode of Luz and Amity getting trapped in an 80′s fashion montage... I mean yes Rise of the TMNT also did that plot the same year, but we had two diffrent plots about someone getting trapped in an eldtrich sitcom and a THIRD this year, all entertaingly unique. Though we do get Luz pulling out an otter suit that’s adorable and she sadly still hasn’t worn yet. “This one says i’m an otter, with a dark side”. She also got thrown out of a school dance for.. wearing an otter suit. Okay the other things we saw in the pilot were understandable but htis is just.. baffling. Who cares what you wear to a dance as long as it isn’t horribly racist of nothing at all. 

Damn you flanders and your glorious ass. Point is Amity shows up and threatens hooty’s life because.. he’s hooty. The fact he isn’t dead already is a testiment to how badass he is and how much money he’d cost Eda to replace. Owl Tubes don’t come out of a stygian hole in the unvierse every day you know. That’s only every three years. It’s basic styigan owl tube science. 

But Amity wants her to be ready and that she’ll have to face her greatest fear.. and cue hooty popping up, poking amity in the face and asking if she wants to know her greatest fear. Really he can clearly hear everything in the house given he heard that, so he heard the death threat he just chose to ignore it. That.. was a mistake. And by mistake I mean we get a hilarious cut to the outside of the house as Luz tries to stop her love intrest from murdering her second mom’s tube monster. The result is some bandages and an eyepatch. To be fair that last one was just flaring up from a  previous beating. 

For this solem task of training, Amity has brought in her local disaster bisexuals.. aka her twin siblgins Eldric and Elmyra, whose greatest fears are dying alone and being stuck with Eldric. Both understandable. They conjur luz’s greatest fears which are.. some of the funniest shit I heard all year.. and also very relatable. Human souls in cat bodies, which is genuinely terrifying good job Luz, Jerks on the internet who mansplain things, relatable, and soy milk. 

But Amity knows this is just the openign act. it needs to be something deeper.. so while Luz dosen’t realize it’s probably her mom issues she brings up her issues with her other mom: that Eda dosen’t think she can do this. Hence we get a giant eda putting Luz in a babychair. Before we can unpack how wrong that sentence sounded, Eda comes out, and marvels at how hot giant her is. But she’s quickly distracted from sex with a giant version of herself, which is not an easy feat, by the relization “Wait Luz is going to fight grom isn’t she.. fuck i’m going to have to save her”, though Luz holds firm on doing it to prove she’s fine and dosen’t need to be saved constantly. it’s a good conflict. Eda IS right that Luz is not ready for this alone, that she’s overcompensating and that Eda would, in normal circumstances be the one to rescue her. As we’ll see it’s not her who does it but still, were this any other foe she probably would be. But Luz’s motivations are equally understandable: She wants to help her friend not have to do this and she wants to prove she can do it. She just wants her mentor, the only person in her life up to meeting her that GNEUINELY supported her in magic to respect her. To have faith in her and actually see how far she’s come. And given how her own mother writes off her dreams, if not unrealistically, and before this she had no friends or support system to speak of outside her mom, it’s easy to see why this is so improtant to Luz: she just wants to make the one person in her life whose ever support her actually think it was worth it when in truth Eda already thinks it does and just dosen’t want her to die. 

She’s just not good with talking to her or not condescending to her as her own ego is stacked sky high, probably because the whole curse thing meant Eda was an outcast by default and the system wants to either chain her to one form of magic and one only or shackle her to them as a hired goon. Her ego, while justified, is also a defense mechanism: a way to shield herself from the fact almost no one cares about her and one of the few people who DOES, dosen’t care what she wants or needs. Once the curse happened she lost just about everything and had to rebuild and thus build up walls around herself and kept everyone else at arms length till Luz changed her for the better. It’s just a tragic clash of two wills both with similar problems but both unwilling to talk about them. 

But with time up, our heroes need to get to the diggity dance. So they indeed do and we get some fun sight gags, Willow makes corsages,  that one girl with the cresent head somehow ended up with Mathomule and is not happy, as anyone who ends up with him should. And it’s time for Luz to face her destiny.. in a tux with a tutu because of course, and Amity likes it because also of course. 

IT’s time to rumble, with King getting nervous due to eda’s prodding about mcing since his co-mc gus is really good at it, and introducing our champion.

No wait sorry he’s still trapped in Mojoworld. no it’s still Luz who shows off a seasons worth of skill by easily dispatching the first few fears and saying to grom let’s finish it.. before grom puts a tentacle on her head. 

It’s to downlaod her fear.. which is Camillia. Granted we could all see it coming but still Luz obviously can’t fight her own mother or her own overwhelming guilt.. her mom did hurt her.. but she gets why and just loves her and wants her to be proud but dosen’t know what to do: tell her the trutha nd possibly loose a happy and fufilling life or wait until it all blows up. It’s a painful choice. So luz and king end up running. King runs first because he can’t handle it and Gus talks him back into the groove while Luz runs away because she can’t fight her own mom, understandable, and Gus encourages king to lead the crowd which he does. Amity and Eda follow Luz. 

So Luz is backed down, facing down a monster tha’ts going to go on to everyone else next if she fails... and Eda prepares to interfere.. but it’s AMITY who faces her fear and dives in. And we find out just what her fear was as grom turns into a humanoid shape and rips the letter in half.. it was a grom invitation. Though conviently the who it’s adressed to was ripped out. 

And yeah not going to save this one: It’s Luz. You know it I know it I didn’t even hide it in the intro. Even before the reveal in a bit it was obvious. But it also makes perfect sense. I’ve avoided talking about her character arc up to this point because I was waiting for now. Amity’s growth is the third major arc of the season behind Luz’s slow learning of magic and eventually induction into hexside and eda’s curse, which I lump in with Lilith chasing her since both were mildly entertwined and then entirely are once the reveal hits in the finale. When we meet her she’s an outright bully.. but we slowly see there’s more there. That she’s not really HAPPY or content, is contstantly under pressure by her family name, is outright bullied by her own siblings who don’t understand her. So Luz coming in, seemingly only being intrested in magic because i’ts neat.. understandably bothers her. She’s not a great person, bullying her old best friend because tha’ts what’s expected and being close with outright bullies because of that.. but it’s through Luz she starts to grow, realizing Luz is genuinely nice and genuinely sorry for any trouble she caused Amity, and evne then both cases were causaed by Amity’s own dickishness and outside forces, so it’s easy to see why she defrosts faster. Her siblings realize they’ve genuinely hurt her, and actually try to be good siblings from then on and help her, and slowly Amity learns to truth luz, trust in her, and accept her... and thus accept her feelings for her. There are gradual hints she’s growing attracted to her.. but her walls had to come down first, and it wouldn’t of worked from the outset. The show cleverly has the two build a genuine friendship, two opposities who work well together, so when feelings do happen it feels natural. It’s not “I’m in love with this person because I have to because you can’t be friends with someone your attracted to” bullshit or anything like that, cough star vs cough, it’s just well built catching feelings. I’ts how this kind of thing SHOULD go: niether went in intending for this to happen.. it’s just happening. 

And Amity’s reluctance is painfully understandable, as Luz is the ONLY friend and support she has. Sure she and willow are patching things up, but WIllow would understandably choose luz over her and she’s terrified of loosing the one good thing in her life. Of course Luz would either say yes, and probably will some day, or let her down gently, she’s nice.. but it’s also understandable to be afraid that someone won’t take the reveal well. I’ve been there trust me, it’s easier when you let it out even if you get rejected, but I get it being hard to let out because you don’t want to loose a friend. I did not, and niether would she, but I can see why she wouldn’t want ot take the plunge. At least not yet. We’ll see this summer hopefully. 

But we do get a shiptastic, gorgeously aniamted scene of the two dancing an fightin gin perfect synch, combinging luz’s new use of plant magic with amity’s mastery of abominations resulting in the two utterly decimating grom, likely in part because with two fast moving targets he can’t get a lock on and likely nees more fear and mass to attack multiple targets at once. Or just more tendrils. it’s a quick, beautful sequence that’s utterly glorious, being framed as romantic as any hetero scene of the type and rightfully so. A triumph and well deserving of this praise. 

Our heros have won, get crowns, and King gets praise. All is well.. except Luz drops the crown once she gets home because she feels like she failed and feels lost about her mom.. though at least king gets it “I’m king and queen, best of both things!”. You tell em sister. 

So we end with Luz genuinely responding to her mom, with some montage stuff as we see Gus and Willow poke a fear blob, willow fears bugs, understandable and Gus fears clowns... 

Also understandable. Though I didn’t put up a bug picture because

And Amity looks out folornly into the night. Camilla responds to Luz.. and mentions letters.. which while Luz brushes those off.. we see someone sent them. And by someone I probably mean king since we now know only eda and him had acess to the portal, and given he was actively encouraging her to lie.. yeah i’m supscious. But we’ll see next season. For now this episode is fan fucking tastic, showing off tons of character development, being representative and sweet as all hell.. and being really funny. Tons of great gags in this one including the turtle guy from an earlier episode being forced to be adisco ball.  This is easily the series best so far and if you haven’t checked it out, please do it’s fantastic as is this show. Check both out. Until the next rainbow i’ts been a pleasure. Tommorow more disney shenanigans this time with pete. And also more of this possibly we’ll see what I get done. 

Goodnight everybody!

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Are you Christian? You usually seem very negative about it with Jake but Nat talks Bible stories and you own a Bible?

There are a few things to unpack in this ask, and I’ll try to touch on them all. 

CW for frank talk about religion/Christianity, child abuse, domestic violence

1. I was raised in a very conservative rural Christian community in which the closest I came to knowing an open atheist before I was in high school was that my best friend’s family didn’t go to church. It was the kind of conservative Protestantism where my friend in high school being Catholic was cause for commentary by my extended family, who were concerned that if I attended church with her I might get into “idol worship.”

I wanted Card Captor Sakura tarot cards once because I thought the art was beautiful and had a family member threaten to burn them.

I took Christianity for granted as the foundation of the world until I watched it used as a cudgel against the people I knew who in some way did not fit a mold that made no sense, and I became aware that the strictures I was living in were subjecting some of the people I loved to utter misery, hatred, and violence. This is before I was able to even conceive of my bisexuality. 

The older I get, the more I see how the American Christianity I grew up with is merely a weapon, twisted and corrupted from the very words that its adherents claim to most believe in, used to excuse and justify bigotry, selfishness, and cruelty. Learning about the history of Christianity used as a weapon during colonization did a lot, too, to make me see that what I read, and learned, in the Bible was not Christianity as most of its adherents understood it.

Would I identify that way now? I don’t know. There is such a weight of negativity, when we have watched those great and pious Christians support tearing children from their families, executing prisoners, justifying all those things they once taught us were unforgivable sins unless you repented, and selling the soul of the national Christian to gain a little power and a justification for their own bigotry.

If you shall know them by their fruits, there are a lot of rotten fruits.

There is a lot of good in Christianity, but it has lost so much ground by catering to the worst and refusing to stand up for those who need love most. The very people we are called to hold our arms out to are turned away for the tiniest, flimsiest, most ridiculous reasons.

The person I have known in my life who most embodies Jesus is an atheist and she is working herself to the bone trying to serve undocumented communities along the border in Texas, despite a consistent risk to her own health from the violence she is routinely threatened with.

2. I don’t really think the comparison of Nat to Jake is a fair one. Jake grew up in an abusive environment, and his experience with church was a congregation that turned away from the obvious signs that he and his mother were being abused. 

Jake experienced being told his father was the ‘head of the household’ and he should be more respectful. He experienced his father’s bullying, violence, and homophobia. He experienced his mother being told that she should try to “steer” his father away from abusing her, or be more faithful, or call on God for help, when the people who could have helped her chose not to.

He saw his father wear the mask of an affable family man, and how everyone chose to believe the mask, because it was easier for them if they did not see a woman and her son who desperately needed a way out.

Jake’s experience was, as a whole, a deeply negative one. And if you think it’s not true to life, I would challenge that you are ignoring a lot of stories of very real people who have experienced and survived this exact thing.

While I have not modeled Jake on a single person, every aspect of his upbringing, right down to being told that if he respected his father as an authority more that the abuse wouldn’t be so bad and being sent back to his mother when he got old enough to fight back and couldn’t be used to control her from afar any longer, is something that happened to someone in real life.

A lot of these things are hidden - but they are still real.

Nat, meanwhile, has a background of some similarity to my own, in that nothing was perfect but the church was not inherently negative in her life, it was simply part of the foundation. She has a lot of joyful memories of her childhood in church.

A lot of us are walking around who may not attend church, at least not regularly, but who were raised on Bible stories that we can still recite word for word even a decade or two later, and who can sing whole songs from Veggie Tales, who could right here and right now burst into “THERE’S A RIVER FLOWING DEEP AND WIDE” at the top of their fucking lungs. You want to hear about Jacob wrestling with God? I can recite parts of it from memory. I can sing “It Is Well With My Soul” right now. How Great Thou Art, all the old hymns, they’re still in my mind and my heart and I still find so many of them beautiful. 

I still think of Bible stories when making comparisons, sometimes, because it’s very much like any memory - your mind pulls on the strongest associations automatically, and our childhoods are foundational. 

So, yeah, Nat thinks about those stories and what is left between the lines, because they’re part of her identity, no matter how she lives, now. She also tells Jake, when following the ambulance to the hospital, “we take the hand that God deals us and we hope for the best”. 

I would argue Nat has retained some faith in God as a force of good, but she has retained a faith that requires her to do the hard work, make the hard choices, and stand up for the ‘least of these’ rather than hoping someone else will, rather than waiting for someone with more power or more authority or more money to do it.

Nat is my view of the ideal Christian - imperfect, prone to mistakes, but her compassion knows no boundaries, and she will stand up for the weak ones, and those who need her, even at the cost of her own freedom and life if necessary - but she doesn’t sit around proclaiming it, she doesn’t need the world to know it, she only needs to show through her actions, be known by her fruits. She fucked up before, sure, but she’ll spend the rest of her life working to undo that failure and how it hurt so many people she could never have understood at the time, with the information she had available to her. If I had to pick a song to define how I see Nat’s view of religion, it would be Dear Me by Nichole Nordeman.

If Jake kept any shred of positivity towards religion, it would be because of living with Natalie Yoder, who actually quietly lives out all the shit that other people just say really loudly while publicly supporting the opposite.

They’re different people, with different life experiences and therefore very different ways of looking at Christianity - and neither one of them is me, not fully. Neither one fully reflects where I am, in my own beliefs. 

I understand them both, but I am not my characters, and I don’t want their mindsets or beliefs to be taken as mirror reflective of my own, because they aren’t.

3. For the record, I own five Bibles. Three were gifts, two I bought myself a long time ago. The archeology Bible I bought myself and I still fucking love it, it’s cool just from a history nerd perspective even. I have never thrown a Bible away in my life, and I don’t get rid of them. 

It’s just a superstition, I guess, but I’ve never been able to. 

When my father died, he had something like seventeen Bibles, many deeply worn and torn. I can’t tell you how we agonized over what to do with them, because throwing away a Bible seemed so deeply wrong. We had to sort of gin each other up to be able to throw any of them out, and we still kept some.

But, yeah. I own a few. 

I think you are likely to discover that a whole lot of us raised very Christian still have Bibles in our houses/apartments, whether we currently practice or not. 

Some of us may only have them for still-religious family members to see, to hold off a series of questions we don’t want to answer. Some of us have them because they’re just part of our lives, like the walls and the kitchen faucet. Some of us still sit down to read them, sometimes, because we still feel moved by the stories that lived in us first.

Some of us keep them for all those reasons and more.

[greekbros]

"greek-Bros: Character headcanons

Dionysus:

He loves anything with any level of alcohol in it and his favorite is obviously wine. However, because of his godly abilities, he functions the in the same way a saltwater fish wood if you placed it in a tank of freshwater. only instead of dying instantly, he just slowly loses his powers and becomes dangerously close to being a mortal. So he usually keeps a supply of wine with him at all costs, and it really doesn't have to be his own wine, it could be any form of alcoholic beverage as long as he consumes it.

He has a mane of curly thick dark hair that accidentally acts like a pocket dimension. he can store something in there, completely forget it and then when he remembers it he can take it out with ease. nobody really cares about how he's able to do this except Athena, she hates it when Dionysus does this and it confounds her to no end, nobody really knows why she hates it but it's speculated that she just doesn't like his chaotic nature.

True to his wild natural look, he actually has two pairs of horns; curled ram horns and long bull horns. He has no memory of it he purposefully grew these horns himself or they may have resulted in his consumption of his wine....but he doesn't care find it to be more of an excuse to adorn his head with more interesting things he finds.

He doesn't have eccentric tastes per se but he does enjoy interesting looking jewelry, placing random objects in his hair and like his brother Apollo enjoys wearing whatever the hell he wants to wear. It doesn't matter if it's a woman's dress or overly ornate armor for no other purpose than to just wear it. The function of the clothing does not concern him, as long as it looks nice on him.

He's very simple god....in the same way your stoner friend is simple, he's is early philosophical for a guy has type and often times you'll see him do weird things that in reality actually have some serious purpose. For example you would pile small stones to form a tower only to have accidentally created the druidic tradition of establishing a location. Another good example would be him having decompulsive need to pile pine cones, according to him he's still trying to figure out what would be the purpose of this but he found out that pine cones are extremely flammable thus perfect as kindling.

He consistently smells of merlot and sweat, it's not that he isn't clean, it's just that with his consistent consumption of his own wine, he doesn't sweat normally anymore... He literally sweats wine thus occasionally giving his skin a pinkish tan hue occasionally, when he bathes his skin goes back to a normal olive-ish tan.

Although he's extremely lazy in some cases, people wipl often mistake him for being soft or weak, it has been noted that in terms of strength he has rivaled both Aries and Heracles in some bizarre manner. nobody really knows if this could have anything to do with his previous incarnation of being a very powerful entity of chaos or if it's just his god-given abilities.

Unlike his fellow gods, he loves being around mortals. He enjoys their nuanced lives and daily endeavors and tries his very best to keep everyone happy.

He's primarily a "good vibes" man 95% of the time and tries to keep the peace, but that doesn't stop him from either justifyingly getting angry or sitting back and watch the drama unfold without his assistant. You also kick your ass and he will do it again if he needs to.

His primary circle of friends/family are Apollo, Hermes, Heracles, Hypnos, Artemis, several nyphs and satyrs, Kale (Delphi's only competent broker/financial expert) and whom ever he can befriend. His secondary basically consists of everyone else whom I've not mentioned.

His wine can actually physically change you with prolonged consumption but with varying results. Many of his leopards for example, have obtained a pinkish, purple hue from drinking the wine dionysus has made for them especially, prolonging their life spans, raising their IQs a little and making them more docile.

On the topic of wine, Dionysus has made several different wines with different properties. He's made wine that acts very closely to a truth serum, a wine that can heal/cure nearly everything, a wine specifically for bacchanals and festivals, wine that actually doesn't effect small kids (for safety reasons) and a wine that can do miscellaneous things.

He's into everything in terms of entertainment, he's surprisingly very cultured in spite of his perceived persona as "the god of drunkards and heathens". So in truth there's never a dull moment with him.

The best to describe him is "a semi-chaotic force of existential calm". He's so chill about so many things, one can mistake this for being aloof or uncaring, but don't worry he's got your back.

He has a list of "dislikes"; he recently has a burning dislike of Romans, drinking water, entitled rude people (because you can be entitled but ultimately unaware of it in an ignorant way), having to do the same task over and over again, being sober (because he believes being drunk keeps something inside him at bay) and frogs....he finds frog to be extremely unreasonable in conversation.

In a more sensual sense, he's up for everything asking as it's not painful or would end in a possible bad way. This explains why he tries his best to stay away from Aphrodite as much as he can help himself.

He doesn't hate Ares, he just finds Ares to be a little too aggressive when it comes to the concept of fun.

He has 0 idea about the existence of some older members of the family, such as Eris for example. He literally has no idea he's not the only agent of chaos in Greece.

He had formed a secret "Drunkard's Society", it consists of other deities from around the world whose specialties occasionally revolve around making alcoholic beverages... if anyone asks yes Jesus (yes he's canon in greek-Bros as the son of "A God" of which no one really knows who) is part of the club by default for some reason sine he used his abilities to make wine. There's very little rules for the club, the only rule is that if possible, bring drinks.

Although he primarily is Pansexual, he is in an very open marriage with Ariadne. Being his only functional braincell, Ariadne is the one who keeps him grounded when making certain decisions, she pretty much completes him in the sense of companionship. She's also pretty compatible with his personality given her upbringing, in spite of her upbringing as a royal, she's always been more carefree and empathetic with her subjects. Plus she doesn't object to most of what Dionysus does but she knows when to step in as his partner on more serious matters. Deep down, Dionysus believes that Ariadne is the second reason why he's still alive. His first being "because my dad mpreg'ed me into existence".

He may or may not be aware of his previous incarnations, he gets weird dreams that feels very violent and feverish at times of a stress filled day. He knows he isn't like the other Olympic gods in many ways.

His seat in Olympia was gifted to him by his aunt Hestia. Hestia, being the oldest child of "The Big 6", felt it was time for her to "retire" from being part of the Olympic gods, no one really understood why she made this decision but she was extremely happy to give the seat dionysus as she personally felt he had a "certain spark" that felt was appropriate as her successor. He too, has no idea why he was given this gift but he assumes that if Hestia felt it was appropriate than it was.

Out of all the olympians, he has made friends with the most deities outside of Greece, second place would be Hermes and third would be Ares.

Apollo

Unlike dionysus, he's extremely calculative, considerably well sorted and more formal. There's always a visible method to what he does and everything has a scientific explanation, in contrast to dionysus's unpredictable meme energy.

He has a bizzarly faire complexion with literally no flaws and his skin almost glows with warmth. His blond hair has been known to also glow depending on the light. His eye color is the same shade as the sky with white pupils, but when it's night time his usually white pupil turns into the normal black, representing the passing of the daytime. The same thing happens to Artemis.

Being the god of the arts and sciences, he loves to educate people. Delos (his home island) is home to one of the best schools of thought in all of Greece.

His first passion of playing the lyre and it still is to this day, if he wasn't the god of the sun, he'd be the god of music.

He puts this persona of "the perfect guy" to mostly everyone he knows, with the exception of Hermes and Dionysus who pretty much know he's a big sensitive softy.

He's an extremely beautiful man with perfect mesomorphic body. He has very gentle mannerisms with a contrasting burning and passionate reaction to anything that could anger him. Pretty much, he's the embodiment of the sun, beautiful, giving, warm but he will burn you.

His personal tastes are similar to dionysus's in terms of preference of clothing. Anything goes and when he looks fashionable in anything, he especially loves wearing lose dresses because he feels the most comfortable in it. He barely sees a reason to assume clothing can be specific to gender norms, as long as it does its function, it suits him pretty well. To him, clothing is clothing.

He's one of the best chariot riders in Olympus, rivalling Triton and occasionally Hades.

He's pan/bisexual to put it best, but he seems to have an easier time forming lasting relationships with men than he does with his female relationships, as evident his mythos. He's not very sure why, and he desires to get better at it considering he actually has the most children in the pantheon.

He's an extremely loving father to his offspring, he's taught most of his children in the ways of art and sciences but is always surprised to see them flourish with their own specific passions and talents.

He thought Orpheus would be the son who's take his place if anything were to happen to him....until he was killed and sent to the underworld. Apollo still mourns for his son's death and doesn't blame Dionysus or his maenads. He believed that Orpheus's was too powerful, even for him

He chooses his lovers, not the other way around. It's an unfortunate trait he inherited from Zeus and it probably is the main factor in why he has such a difficult time with having female companions.

He literally knows about almost everything on almost every subject.

Like Ariadne, he's Dionysus's other braincell. Because of this, the two seem to have an ongoing battle of ideologies that grew into an extremely friendly rivalry to see who can get the most apostles and followers. There's no competitive energy between them, it just feels like a huge game to them.

His circle of friends oddly enough don't stop at Hermes and Dionysus, along with Artemis, his lovers and his muses, it seems Apollo has a surprisingly small circle of friends out of the "the bois". Inspite of his more intellectual relationship with Athena as a fellow scholar and "thinking person", he doesn't necessarily consider her an ally. In fact he actually has a very interesting list of possible foes that are mostly other members of the family. His number one rival however seems to be Eros, who has repeatedly caused him grief in the past, he's probably the second factor as to why he has such a complicated relationship with female companions.

He's a very accommodated individual, it baffles him till this day as to why his twin finds more comfort being in the outdoors than in Olympus, seeing how both of them were raised the same way. He doesn't like being dirty or getting too dirty, he's a bit if an introvert most of the time.

His favorite foods is anything grown under the sun. The only thing "fermented in the dark" he would ever consume is Dionysus's wine, which outside of ambrosia, is the only drink he trusts other than his own.

It may not look like it but he's actually a serious fighter. Especially loves using his bow and arrow and trains alongside with his twin sister.

Give me look pretty, but he will still kick your ass if you deserve it.... Or not he could just simply incinerate you out of existence. In terms of powers, out of the trio he actually does overpower them through natural force than anything.

His Muse's basically are a mixture between his group of female friends and essentially sisters by covenant. He's only had one relationship with one of the muses but outside of that he has NEVER once thought of any of them as calcubines. He will retaliate if anyone assumes otherwise, the reason being is because he would never harm or have any intentions of hurting any of his muses. They see him as a brotherly figure and teacher of the arts, NOT as a master.

Hermes

He's the one god in the family who's decided to make his life a lot more harder by having more hats to wear. He ironically likes it because it always makes him feel "closer to normal".

He's the hardest working of the trio, the only other individuals who works as hard as him is Hestia, Hephaestus and Hades.

Simultaneously, he loves lounging around eating his favorite snack, high energy foods. Bread, surgery fruits, nuts, anything to use to help his caloric intake for his long days of running.

He's literally fast enough to travel forward and back in time. At first, he was just found it strange when he would mention someone, it would be either in past tense or no body would have known who they were. After he found out that he was literally running forwards and back in time, he's been carefully pacing himself.

His favorite thing to do is observe anything really, especially loves seeing what happens after he effects something. For example, he could miss place a cup for no reason other than to see what will happen next.

Although being older than Dionysus, he's the shortest and "youngest looking" of the trio. His youthful complexion however has a dismal purpose. He notices that mortals find him a lot more approachable then the other gods. He primarily looks like a young lab in between the ages of 19 in comparison to Apollo's late 20 something and Dionysus's mid 20 something with a positive youthful disposition, the reason why is because in his "real" form, he actually is taller, pushing to late 20's to early 30's, has a little bit of facial hair, facially stern looking face of some hardened by life and overall "intimidating", not in an Ares sort of way....more like as if you can't really read what's on his mind. This may actually have something to do with the fact his speed could have actually been something he inherited from grandfather, Chronos. He hates his original body and does everything in his power to avoid showing even Apollo and Dionysus this version of himself.

He bisexual with a preference for women. He loves to experiment but that's when he gets in the most trouble. A great example would be the primary reason why his sort of least favorite son, Pan, is the way he is.... because he actually mated with a woman....in the form of a goat, since then, he has had to keep on eye on Pan due to his pension for causing problems....the bad kinds. His favorite children are Hermaphrodite and Hermanubis, he believes they're both his best out comes and both children have the best qualities of both parents.

He's extremely terrible at coming up with names for his children.

He dangerously takes more after his grandfather than he does Zeus physically and powerwise. Due to his incredible speed, his connection to everything from the underworld, to the intricate influences he has on mortal life, and even the fact he actually feels time catching up with him when he over runs, Zeus feared that his father's dark influence was on Hermes and protected him as much as possible from the scrutiny of his other siblings. This fed the fear that Hermes was to be the son to overthrow Zeus....until Apollo became Hermes's closest brother and friend and until Dionysus came along and basically padded the weird "dark prophecy" down to a grinding hult. Since then, Hermes secretly is forever in dept to both brothers for essentially proving everyone else's assumption of his dark nature wrong.

He has an extremely interesting relationship with his demigod brothers like Heracles and Perseus, with a lot of convincing, Hermes was able to get both Demigods to be considered full fledged gods by Zeus's blessings. Since Demigods age far more slower than normal mortals, unless consecrated into Olympus by Zeus, Hermes always consolidates his demi-siblings since he knows unlike the Gods, they will too one day die. He just really didn't want to lose his favorite half-brothers.

Out of the trio, he's seen the most shit. He's seen painful and peaceful deaths. Being a psychopomp isn't all fun and games unfortunately, it's the equivalent of being a doctor in terms of emotional disturbance. He does find it comforting that the only people who completely and fully comprehend what he internally goes through is Thanatos, Hypnos, Charon and Hades. All four of which constantly consolidate him on how he feels and that it's ok to go through the motions of what they call "indiscriminate mourning", a feeling of constent mourning for those who have no relevance to him but which one constantly feels empathy. In a dark humorous way, a demon in Tartarus suggested to remove his "empathy" to ease his suffering but Hermes refused because he'd rather have it than feel nothing.

Being the god of deception, he actually hides his insecurities and personal on-goings extremely well. He knows what's important is the present of things, he's seen death (literally and the god) and has seen what life has to offer. It's not going to stop him from having the best time with his brothers. Lucky for him, he tends to forget he's pretending and goes on as best as he wants to.

He loves animals. He's especially sympathetic to turtles and tortoises, he absolutely admires them for just being such a slow animal who can also be close to home. He recently discovered sloths in the continent that will soon be discovered as South America, and is completely enchanted by their slowness. He also loves 'racing' with faster animals like horses and antelope.

He is the only living being Cerberus let's through in and out of the underworld. Mostly because Cerberus never seems to catch him, thus the beast doesn't really bother, plus Hermes always brings treats for him so that helps.

The wings on his helmet are emotive when active and melds into the metal when inactive. Being the most 'human' of the trio, he can slip into a crowd unnoticed.

Out of the trio he seems the most normative, being more down to earth like Artemis. However he doesn't show the same amount of contempt for the pampered life of a god as much as Artemis does, he's comfortable where ever.

Like Dionysus, he has a very wide range of companions, friends and allies. he doesn't have a lot of enemies that he can name but he does have a bit of a complicated relationship with Ares. He doesn't really hate Ares, but he does enjoy occasionally making a fool out of him. Ares in truth doesn't mind this considering Hermes did save him from some Giants who put them in an urn....is early enough it's not that he's indebted, it's just that when he threatens to kill her is it really isn't anything.

Hermes enjoys antagonizing people isn't very fond of. Hera specifically, he tries to find every way to anger her as much as possible. Even if it results at some else's expense.

He can and will, consentingly fuck your wife. And he would do it again.

Juxtaposed to his complicated and emotionally heavy job as a psychopomp, he's an absolute funnyman. It even borders on 'Bugs Bunny' like antics.