#fandom meta-discourse

[madlori]

On Tommy Kinard

"It's not that I don't like Buck and Tommy, it's just happening so fast, he's underdeveloped!"

*clears throat*

Here is a recap of what we know about Tommy. And this is just off the top of my head, I didn't rewatch anything.

He was closeted at the 118 before and found the atmosphere repressive. He (probably) acted like a dick to fit in. When presented with the chance to make things better, he took it, and developed positive relationships with Hen, Chim and Bobby.

He was in the army and trained there as a pilot.

He knows Muay Thai and has a set up in his house.

He likes to work on cars and has a lift at his house (where TF does he live is my question - he has some nerve being agog at Buck's loft if he has a muay thai gym and a car lift)

He is down for violating departmental policy at the drop of a hat (has done so on at least two occasions) to help a friend and has no problems fucking with the fire chief.

He is a nerd. He likes pub trivia and has incorrect Star Wars opinions, and can keep up with Chim in the movie-quoting department.

His favorite movie is "Love, Actually" and he likes craft beer and monster trucks.

He came out when he transferred to Harbor and felt comfortable enough to stop lying about who he was.

He follows MMA and has friends in Vegas who like him well enough to hook him up to a frankly insane degree.

He'll risk his own life and engage in helicopter skulduggery to save people he doesn't know...I mean, apart from doing that for a living.

He'll take time out of his day to give a tour to the cute boy who called him up and offer to give that boy flying lessons (a significant time investment) which was probably maybe about more one on one time with said boy.

He yearns for the belonging and found family that the 118 became after his departure and probably befriended Eddie hoping to earn a plate at the cookout, aside from just clicking with him.

He likes Eddie and Chris a lot and they like him. Chimney also likes him.

He was attracted to Buck right away and was emotionally aware enough to pick up on Buck's jealous feelings over Eddie and his friendship, even if he was surprised that it was him Buck wanted to get to know.

He respects and values Buck and Eddie's friendship and wanted to make sure Buck knew that.

He's brave enough to shoot his shot by planting one on a dude.

He's a lil bitchy but also generous and ready to throw in with this insane guy who's inviting him to a family wedding after 0.5 dates.

He showed up to a bachelor party when he was on call because Buck asked him to, then showed up in turnouts after fighting a fire for like 12 hours yadda yadda we all know this part.

He has got it BAD for one Evan Buckley, who he only calls "Evan" which according to LFJR is a conscious decision by the writers, which fascinates me.

He was willing to take a chance with a man just discovering his sexuality BUT wasn't willing to put himself through that if the man in question wasn't ready for it. When Buck showed him that he was, he was all in.

He does NOT take his coffee like that.

Oh and

He's a beast.

This is VASTLY more information than we knew about ANY of Buck's previous girlfriends with the possible exception of Abby. Even Taylor did not get this much development over 20 episodes (things we knew about her: she was an ambitious and ethically flexible reporter, did not eat fudge, had a dad in jail, and sometimes jogged for exercise, she was capable of being nice and did love Buck, I believe). And as for it being fast? Sometimes it just be like that? A relationship doesn't have to have year(s) of buildup. Sometimes people do just meet, like each other, and start dating, in fact in the real world that's usually what happens. It's in TV Land that you have to have eighteen seasons of UST before pulling the trigger. Most of the time in reality people just vibe off each other and decide to go out and THEN they learn about each other.

And they've got a great start. You'd think they'd barely spoken by how a few naysayers are talking about it - the loft scene was like a solid five minutes of very open conversation, the Cringe Date seemed to have gone well and again, open and honest (if cringey) conversation before Cockblocker Eddie showed up, and the coffee meetup was again....open and honest conversation. They're not gonna show us long scenes of them exchanging firefighting stories and workout preferences (I mean, I'd watch that, but it's not what the show is about).

In conclusion, anyone saying he's poorly developed or the relationship is "out of nowhere" either is being willfully obtuse or has ridiculously unrealistic expectations for relationships and/or what constitutes character development.

As for whether they have chemistry, that's a matter of subjective opinion. Given that a TON of people watched that harbor tour scene (even when it was posted as a sneak peek) and started going "wait...what's going on here...are they flirting??" might be a clue. People were talking about Bi!Buck maybe happening with Tommy based solely off that clip of the harbor tour and what they were seeing between them. And imho that loft scene was crackling. But we all see things through the lenses of our biases, myself included.

Got that off my chest, whew.

[fulltacs]

IT’S A MIRACLE Y’ALL!!!

@codslut ROSE FROM THE DEAD TO BLOCK AND UNBLOCK ME AFTER MY LAST ADDITION TO HER/ @sheheal ‘s POST!!! HALLELUJAH!!!

bitch.

[conarcoin]

the concept of "lore" ruined discussion of mcrp because like. people use it to mean some kind of weird hybrid of plotline and worldbuilding but ONLY if the server is drama-focused otherwise it doesn't count i guess.

so you get people saying like. hermitcraft isn't a lore server. smplive isn't a lore server. sdmp isn't a lore server. and it's like yeah this is true because "lore server" is a meaningless slop category you guys made up. they very much have plotlines and worldbuilding though 💀

[jessmalia]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 2x03 "The Burning Mill"

[perseidlion]

I like to think that if Edwin had lived, he would have quietly embraced his sexuality. I love how in the show that the anguish Edwin feels is more about being known on a deeper level, and that his affection is focused on his best friend rather than struggling with his sexuality. I think Edwin has known for a long time that he was gay, even if he didn't acknowledge it or put words to it.

We think of Edwin and the time he came from as pretty buttoned-up and therefore closeted. But until the modern era, it was actually one of the freer times for queer people in London. It was more about scandals with married men or high-up people having affairs than your average man going to an underground club or having a lover on the side. This was at the same time as the Weimar Republic in Germany where queer people were living openly. It was one of those periods in history where queer rights took several steps forward and then were forced backward.

I think Edwin is uptight because that's a way of asserting control over a life where he's had very little rather than a classic closet-case. He had to shrink himself so much in Hell. The demon chasing him was all about not drawing attention to himself lest he be destroyed. It was the horrific personification of the fear of being known.

We see him start to get over that by the end of season 1. He's confessed to Charles. He's started flirting back with the Cat King. He was uncomfortable with Monty's affections not because he was a boy, but because he didn't feel that way about him.

So I like to picture the Edwin Payne who lived as having a rich social life with his favourite underground clubs and subtle flirtations. And I imagine he would have fallen in love (probably more than once) and maybe settled into the life of a 'bachelor' with a long-time lover. Or perhaps he'd find a woman who the arrangement benefitted as well and married her.

Maybe he got sent to the trenches of WWI (almost certainly, given his age) and maybe he loved and lost someone there.

In any case, I prefer this headcanon over him being closeted and unsure of himself. I prefer to imagine him not as a cliche closeted man from the past, but as someone who just never got a chance to shine and really know himself.

[antimony-medusa]

Okay so.

Look. At this point I am old and I am tired and I am pretty firmly coming down on write what you want just archive lock it or something and tag it please. If I am hitting tropes or trends or ships that don't do it for me, I can simply click away and my day is not ruined. Cancellation is not on my radar at all. Okay. So. With that out of the way.

Look. Sometimes, when you are pushing the boundary of platonic possessive and platonic kink-adjacent stuff, if you lead special emphasis on the fact that everybody involved is related, it doesn't necessarily make it magically more platonic. It just gives it extra vibes. Specifically you are like STRONGLY invoking incest as a kink right now, my guys. This is getting dire. Like I'm sorry but if someone is lying down half asleep listening to the "sounds of kissing" and one of the people doing the kissing keeps saying how good of a brother the other person is, like, you can smack a "platonic kissing" tag on that one all you like, and I can even follow you on a faith journey and believe that you intended that to be platonic, but uh, the first reading of that one is distinctly like— man, please. I'm dying here.

In the same way that if you have an interaction— say, you did a cuddle-potion fic, and you say to yourself "man these guys are getting handsy, if they're both dating age this would look kinda sketchy'' so your solve is to make one of them twelve and then suddenly you have made your slightly off-colour fic take on a whole new tone— in the same way that making one of the characters underage isn't a magic button you can press to make something fully platonic no matter what, making your characters related isn't going to make it magically platonic if they are say, all in the same bed and one of the characters is feeling the mattress move as his brother and father cuddle each other and say how much they love each other.

This isn't even an isolated incident. Please.

If you are looking at your interaction and going "man this kinda looks like ship" and you want to make sure people don't think it's ship, aging down the character isn't a magic solve, and making them related isn't a magic solve, not when the rest of the tropes you are pulling from are pulled directly from romance and porn. You just invoked a DIFFERENT kink on top of the first one you had. Like you might not know that that's where the tropes come from but guys. Please. The solve for this scene is either changing it substantially until it no longer looks like ship, accepting that it looks off but you don't mean it that way and go "if people misunderstand this it's not my problem" or maybe considering the option that what you want to write is ship. I keep hitting this stuff and going "are you SERIOUS" and then it gets worse.

Or maybe, idk, you're specifically into all the people being related like that. You do you, the contents of your Ao3 account is not hurting anyone. But in that case please for the love of GOD can you please consider tagging it?

[zephrunsimperium]

I genuinely don't know how anyone can come away from Book of Bill not accepting that Bill and Ford were A Thing. I'm not going to go through every example in the text that supports that - plenty of people already have.

Depicting abusive relationships is not inherently evil - especially considering that BoB never presents the abuse as acceptable. Bill can be both sympathetic for the things he's gone through and a perpetrator of horrible things. Ford can be both a victim and a very morally grey individual who didn't treat his assistant or brother well. It's nuanced; it's a good story, it makes the audience reflect and think. That's a good thing. And as an English major I don't think it serves the story to somehow get around the fact that they had something very not straight going on between them.

I understand not wanting to see abusive relationships if it's a trigger but pretending it doesn't exist is just not a very mature response, one that I believe does more harm that good.

So yeah, Bill and Ford explored each others bodies, I don't know what to tell you.

[ride-thedragon]

Because I'm seeing the discourse pop up. Fake Rhaena enjoyers do not have a valued opinion when it comes to the leak about her and Nettles.

"Rhaena gets a bigger plot." Rhaena is literally a beckon of hope for her house by the end, the only dragonrider with her dragon of house Targaryen by the end. She has the entire Vale plot, which , as Rhaenyra thinks Tyraxes isn't enough, could easily be her playing the game of thrones and forming a close alliance and meeting her future husband.

"She deserves a dragon." She has one. It's one of the prettiest dragons in ASOIAF history. One that matches with her sisters.

"Nettles' plot points can be transferred." They can't. It's the worst part of the rumour and people acting as though they care about either characters. It's literally impossible for the characters because of how different they are. Neither of their plots can be transferred one to one. Rhaena is a Sansa parallel in the Narrative, Nettles is Daenerys'.

"It stops this conflict." Any conflict in this instance with these two is point of the story. Their conflicts are there for a reason.

"Rhaena can still get Morning" Then WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT???? That's actually insane. What would be the point?

To those people who say Rhaena is black, she isn't. I'll link the multiple post as to why:

Here

And here

And Nettles specifically.

The bottom line is that Rhaena is Valyrian. She isn't black within the written narrative even though her actor is. The way these two gentlemen are black, she isn't.

If she takes Nettles' place, it's racism.

So you fake Rhaena enjoyers who probably have a Daemon daughter oc to revoke her in your canon, who can go on for hours about Daemon and the Velaryon boys without one post about his actual children and who hate Laena for no reason can disrespectfully sit this one out. This change doesn't affect you or your enjoyment.

Let's not act as though the Nettles replacement theory doesn't predate Rhaena’s introduction as a character on the show.

Either all the final girls are on screen, or the point of the adaptation is lost before it can establish itself.

[asm5129]

I’m playing the new life is strange game and apparently people are pissed at how it handles following up the original because OF COURSE THEY ARE.

The first game has two endings, one where Chloe survives and one where she dies.

Officially, neither is the “canon” ending, that’s been made repeatedly clear since the original game released.

But a bunch of people keep demanding more of the Max and Chloe story. It doesn’t matter that they’ve gotten comics about it and a prequel, they still want more. They don’t want to let Life is Strange be an anthology series.

So here, Max is back as the protagonist. But guess what? Chloe isn’t a main character.

Because she fucking DIED in one of the endings, and both are canon.

So even if you choose to play in the timeline where she survived, they had to write her out or they would have had to develop two different games, one with Chloe and one without.

So instead they made it an interesting character issue. Max is stuck in the past, in the trauma of the events of the first game while Chloe wants to move forward.

It was never going to be Max and Chloe living happily ever after. It couldn’t be.

That’s not an interesting game, and it flies in the face of the ending of the original.

This game is in many ways rooted in Max dealing with that trauma and like…that’s an interesting story.

But you’re mad because the story you wanted isn’t the story they made, even though that was literally never going to happen.

The LiS fandom is shitty sometimes

Very gatekeep-y

There’s a sort of notion that there’s only one way for a Life is Strange game to be Life is Strange, but the people that buy into that don’t seem to realize that their criteria is literally just the game that already exists.

Maybe I’d give more credibility to the current criticisms if I hadn’t had to deal with YEARS of so-called “fans” harassing me for being a legitimate fan of every LiS entry, rather than just the ones it’s most popular to like. I have had to deal with this toxic gatekeeping and backlash for fucking EVER so it’s hard to give much of a shit about y’all not getting exactly what you want here.

[newvegascowboy]

I still think too many damn people on this site are concerned with others enjoying media "the right way"

[necrotic-nephilim]

this is not a ship post, but something that frustrates me a lot in fanon concerning Jason Todd that attempts to soften Jason's return to Gotham for the sake of found family domesticity or easy hurt/comfort or just sliding him into the Batfam sooner, is they all seem to fundamentally misunderstand Jason.

because there seem to be a lot of fandom popular concepts of Jason coming home much sooner and just not having his whole Under The Red Hood arc. which in theory is fine and i can see the want to simplify canon to make room for your lighthearted more fluff-leaning concepts. but in everyone without fail, the way they address the clown-shaped elephant in the room is by having some throwaway line that "oh Jason quietly kills the Joker and moves on".

when the Joker being dead or alive is not the *point*. if by some chance accident, the Joker had died prior to Jason's return, whether by ridiculous freak accident, getting whacked by a fellow villain, hell even someone actually doing so to avenge Jason, it *would not* satiate Jason's anger. because Jason's end goal in UtRH is not to simply kill the Joker: it is to make *Bruce* kill the Joker. Jason's anger is directed to the idea that to Jason, if Bruce truly loved Jason, he would've killed the Joker. that is love, for Jason. compromising your personal values for love and not letting someone go unavenged. when Jason was Robin, almost every angry or misguided thing he did was born of love. he wanted to kill/hurt Two-Face because he believed Dent killed his father. he was so angry at Felipe because an innocent woman was dead due to that man's actions. he wanted to save his mother in a situation he knew he shouldn't be in because he loved her. his anger, his violence, it is driven by love and feelings of righting wrongs. that is how he thinks wrongs *should* be righted. that is how you avenge and *love* someone.

because so long as Jason's return to Gotham doesn't end in Bruce killing the Joker (which, it never will bc Bruce is Bruce), Jason will never forgive Bruce. you cannot wave away the layers of hurt and complicated trauma by killing Joker offscreen. because Jason will still be angry that Bruce didn't avenge him. in his eyes, that means Bruce did not love him enough. he was not truly loved by Bruce the way he loved Bruce. bc Bruce was Jason's whole *world*. prior to being taken in, Dick and Tim, they had support systems. they had loved ones. they knew what stability and healthy family love looked like. Jason *didn't*. and that's not to say that Catherine Todd did not love him with her whole heart and thus he loved her, but it certainly wasn't a stable and safe support system for Jason to grow up in. Bruce was Jason's first real sense of a stable, healthy life. and so of course Jason poured everything into Bruce and loved Bruce so devoutly. Bruce was his world. like he says, if it had been Bruce, Jason would've stopped at nothing.

so his betrayal is rooted in that he was not avenged, not that Joker is alive. so long as the Joker does not die by Bruce's hands, it will never be enough for Jason. (in this era, at least.) notably, this is also why i don't think it would change a thing if Jason knew the whole "oh Bruce wanted to kill the Joker but Superman stopped him" tidbit that fanon has really latched onto as a way to pacify Jason's anger toward Bruce. Jason knowing that wouldn't change a thing, in my opinion. because Jason knows Bruce. and a tenant of Bruce's character is that he grapples with murder *every day*. the whole point is how *easy* it would be for him. he is a human weapon, trained by killers, trained to be deadly. he is the greatest strategist to exist. he knows he could kill someone and get away with it. *no* trace, no proof, nothing. and he knows he *wants* to. wants to kill the Joker, Joe Chill, anyone who's hurt him that viscerally.

but he *doesn't*. that's the point. Bruce wakes up every day with that question on his mind, and every day the answer is the same. Bruce's morality is not a decision he made in an alleyway when his parents died, it's a decision he continues to make every day and he *must* continue to make in order to remain who he is. Jason is quite familiar with the fact that Bruce grapples with this daily. i do not think it surprised nor fazed Jason to know that Bruce did *consider* killing the Joker. that he wanted to. maybe even planned to. but a consideration, a want, a plan, is just a thought. it's nothing substantial, and substance is everything to Jason. at the end of the day, Bruce didn't. he was talked down by *Clark* of all people with an excuse of diplomatic immunity, as if Jason and Bruce don't both know that Bruce could've *easily* found a way to make it look like an accident or some other loophole. because he's Batman. there's always a loophole. he always finds a way when he actually intends to. but he never actually intended to kill the Joker. so he didn't. and Jason would know that there was never an intent. it's an interesting piece of fodder to add to the nuance of Jason and Bruce, but honestly, i think it'd make Jason angrier to have that excuse thrown in his face. as if Bruce hasn't beaten Clark half a dozen times by now. it's a flimsy nonsense excuse that Jason would rip to shreds.

so while yes, i understand the wish for easy lighthearted fanfic that doesn't have to deal with the nuances of canon, i think that Jason's character will always be so deeply robbed and altered if you try to fix his thirst for vengeance with an off-page killing of Joker at Jason's hands. it was never the point. the point was that -in his own eyes- he wasn't loved enough for Bruce to make an acception. he realized that not even his *death* would come before Bruce's Mission. Jason truly believed that Bruce loved him and held him as the most important thing in the world, and now he has proof that Bruce didn't. because the Mission mattered more.

i'm not saying i have a solution to this conundrum if you're attempting to solve it for fanfic/fanon, nor am i even saying it's a bad thing it exists. i just think it becoming overwhelmingly common has led to misunderstandings surrounding Jason's motivations and feelings about this arc and it's an unsatisfying solution that only seeks to pacify Jason's rage and his trauma responses for the sake of found family-ification.

[fulltacs]

fuck it. free the blocklist.

tw for ableism, death threats, cw for general rage-inducing behavior

this is not exhaustive, this is a starting point. BLOCK these people, do not interact.

- literally anyone who interacts with @/ladygoth at this point. I don’t doubt that she and her friends are responsible for at least half of the hate anons received by darkfic writers

- as for the people who were “protecting” codslut/Myka… they’ve all been in my notifs liking my update post and un-liking sheheals post and deleting anything they might’ve said on the situation. yay, I guess. I may have unblocked you, but the other nosy people following everything certainly didn’t.

- on a related note, anyone who goes by “Myka” or “Hannah” gets blocked ON SIGHT (half-joking). I don’t care if that’s your name (please don’t put your real name on the internet) you better make up a new one 😤

- /bookobsessedram, /mothymunson, @starry-eyedblog , /ghostsbimbo, @ghostlywhiskey and @ghostly-whiskey, /angelofacidx, and @ladyxtiger were all involved in being assholes in the discord as seen here. not pictured: /bjornthebearguy and someone going by “spiders” in the server (not to be confused with /notspiders, my bad). and i’m sorely disappointed in /bunnyreaper, as mod, for letting them continue to chase people off, even though it had been brought to their attention before.

AND ESPECIALLY @simonrillleyyysss and @simonrillleyyyysss2 and @joostyklein (all their known alts). As a matter of fact, fuck everyone who’s friends with them (including /konigsblog). Jordi, G***, whatever the fuck you’re going by, I am so fucking sick of seeing your name in my DMs. So many people messaged me to say it was you and your gang’s hateful behavior that drove them away from the fandom, and I can vouch for some of them because I was there the whole time. What the fuck is wrong with you guys. I have a hard time believing your apology means ANYTHING when you used the discord to lead a brigade on Bo back in January, and CLEARLY HAVEN’T STOPPED being an asshole since then (“I still don’t like soapskneebrace either way”). Bo and Madi were not your only victims, again, there were quite a few others who came forward. You bullied anyone who disagreed with you and at the end of the day you only care about your follower count.

The craziest part is that most of the people we watched you bully are open about their autism diagnosis. And this was just a casual observation I made, not even an accusation, but five minutes later you make your first-ever very casual not-at-all-sus claim of having autism.

do you think we were born fucking yesterday. Trying to get ahead of ableism accusations by suddenly claiming to be autistic, even if true, is not gonna have the effect you thought it would, cause I wasn’t the only person who clocked that as WEIRD. (Internalized ableism is still ableism, btw.)

Just shut the fuck up. For once. It’s THAT SIMPLE. Leave everyone alone. Make your little posts without feeling the need to be assholes to other people.

Fun fact: I have received no death or rape threats in my anon mail, and maybe that’s because I’m not a very big blog. Or maybe it’s cause I know what all your fucking faces look like (hello, internet safety where?). I said fuck all y’all yesterday and I stand by that. Hopefully your time here is met with the same amount of love you’ve shown your peers.

[messiahzzz]

You’re one of the most annoying people on this site. And that really says A LOT because WOW! Shut the Fuck up about Gale wanting to be a father or not. He never says that he doesn’t want to be one. You projecting things onto him doesn’t make it Canon.

on a serious note: i’m certainly not the one that continuously brings up this topic unprompted. i personally really don’t understand the entire controversy around the topic or why fandom feels the need to rehash this conversation almost weekly. i truly believe that there’s nothing more of value to learn from it, to address, or add to it… yet fandom won’t let it rest.

to once again clarify: what i mean by “gale wanting to be a father isn’t canon” is that there is no evidence/neither hints anywhere in any of the dialogue that support the contrary. characters like h*lsin, w*ll and la*’zel have entire adoption subplots. all of them mention their children explicitly during the epilogue:

narrator: *your soul warms thinking of lily aurora ravengard, your adopted daughter. a treasure of a girl, found at the entrance of the open hand temple - one grey eye, one brown.* w*ll: ah, the girl could melt the staunchest heart. she might even have brought a smile to old withers' face! w*ll: but tonight is for us - and lily's only four months of age, besides. i promise, the temple will keep her in good care.

player: and our little hatchling? is he safe? la*'zel: of course. i have complete trust in our newest allies. xan is in fine hands tonight. la*'zel: what a wonder he is. he will be a fine warrior, if he chooses. or a poet, or an explorer, or a scholar.

h*lsin: being away from it... i cannot help but worry how they will fare in our absence. player: we'll be back before they know it. h*lsin: i hope so. the children shall miss their bedtime tale tonight - though perhaps i can glean a few new stories from our friends here, to make up for it.

even shad*wh*art has a line where she briefly mentions that children might be a possibility for her in the future.

shad*wh*art: and i get to see my parents almost every day - i need to make every moment with them count, after so much was stolen from us. but they're doing well, [...] shad*wh*art: who knows? perhaps they'll have grandchildren before long.

gale in comparison? he has none of that. he remains childfree during the entirety of the game + epilogue. in fact, his line in the epilogue that addresses the topic of grandkids is this one:

tara: this is why mrs. dekarios and i will be waiting an eternity more for grandchildren. nodecontext: self-pitying gale: psst! shoo, tara. nodecontext: shooing away tara like one would a naughty cat.

i already wrote a post about this entire discourse here [x] but to repeat myself once more: all of the dialogue that vaguely addresses the topic of children in any way in regards to gale are these snippets

player: gale… how would you feel about having another person in our relationship? gale: what, like a child? i’m not quite sure i’d consider myself father material, plus our current lifestyle isn’t exactly what i’d call settled…

gale, upon spotting oliver during their game of hide and seek: ah, i have you! just a shame i don’t want you.

gale treating the children the group comes across with respect isn’t an indicator either. this is a courtesy gale extends to everyone he meets. he’s a character that approves of a protagonist who systematically commits good deeds. whether it’s sparing animals, helping without compensation in mind, or aiding children. wanting children to be cared for… and you know… for them not to die is common etiquette that every adult should extend to a child in need. those are not “dad goals!!!” it’s quite literally just basic human decency. gale is genuinely kind and caring to everyone he meets, there is no reason why this also wouldn’t apply to children.

i often see fandom mention his encounter with mol at last light and how excited he is to talk to her. which i think greatly misinterprets the context of the scenario since he didn’t have much of a reaction to mol before either — gale is ecstatic about lanceboard. again evident by his reaction to the party finding the life-sized board during the wyrmway trials, and how he immediately offers to give tav pointers. explaining different approaches to them in enthusiastic detail if they allow him to. the man just really likes lanceboard… as well as being the smartest person in the room.

gale: ah, lanceboard! why, this might just be the highlight of our misadventures to date.

gale: lanceboard happens to be a game with which i have more than a passing familiarity. might i offer a suggestion? nodecontext: gale's a badass lanceboard player, anticipating showing off

if you want to headcanon your tav and gale raising a big family together that is more than fine and no one is stopping you. whatever you want to happen to these two after the storyline of the game is up to your respective fantasies. no one is policing you on what you should do with your own character. go wild and create whatever fan content you wish, no justification required.

yet once again, as there is no mention in canon anywhere — neither in the main game nor the epilogue — that this is something gale would ever want (whether that may mean immediately or somewhere down the line) gale wanting to be a father remains a headcanon. while gale being childfree is explicitly shown in the game, in strict comparison to other companions that either have children by the end of the game or voice the desire to (eventually) have them.

my personal preferences are of no relevance here whatsoever. i care about accurate and correct characterization and will point out inconsistencies/false information no matter the topic. i, for one, want to appreciate these characters in the way they're written, not how i ideally want them to be.

[xray-vex]

hey remember when the OFMD s2 teaser video dropped and there were people who were somehow CONVINCED that Stede was referring to Izzy when he said "I don't care what any of you say, he's actually a good guy" and not, y'know, Ed, whom they were literally just talking about in this scene?

like what the hell was that about

[perseidlion]

So there's this character in Dead Boy Detectives.

He's:

Attractive

Flirts shamelessly with Edwin

Makes physical advances toward Edwin

Makes Charles jealous and "gets in the way of the main ship"

Is of indeterminate age but is possibly decades or centuries old

Can transform into an animal.

And it's this guy:

AND YET I have never seen any discourse calling Monty a creep and a predator.

Unlike The Cat King, he even kissed Edwin suddenly and without explicit consent. He also lied, manipulated and betrayed all of them and nearly got them killed. Yes, he said he didn't know Esther was planning on destroying them. But c'mon, it's Esther.

Somehow though, the fandom vilifies The Cat King more than Monty. I think the reason why is worth a long, hard look in the mirror.

The biggest difference between the two is TCK's sexual nature and his in-your-face queerness. Those are two things that have been historically vilified and othered about gay/queer men.

Even these days, through the whole "no kink at pride" discourse, this argument continues through respectability politics.

Simply put, a short little twink with a crush is a non-threatening gay man, while TCK with his overt sensuality and gender non-conforming clothing represents a threat. Monty's advances are seen as cute, while TCK's are predatory, even though Monty propositioned Edwin with a kiss as surely as TCK overtly propositioned him.

If TCK's sexually-charged flirting bothered you in a way that Monty's advances didn't (despite the fact the audience knew that at least at first, Monty's advances were a big old lie) ask yourself why that is. The reason is probably that you were taught to fear and vilify overt displays of queer sexuality . Even queer people need to unlearn this particular bias.

And just to cover all the bases, I will shout again that The Cat King is a fae/trickster and that Edwin's punishment was proportionate in that context. Edwin used magic and confined a creature he knew to be as intelligent as a human and was punished for it with a very long leash and a (totally doable) task. It was a task designed to make Edwin see the cats as individuals instead of tools to help him close a case. The sort of fiction that DBD has its roots in (and the source material) is full of these sort of eye-for-an-eye type of punishments with magical creatures.

Just to be clear, I don't think we should be vilifying Monty, either. You can't 1:1 fictional scenarios onto real life and apply our standards of morality to them, especially not in a setting with man-eating mushrooms, ghosts, and transforming animals. All the conflict these two characters brought to the plot was necessary. If everyone acted with perfect morality all the time, fiction would be incredibly boring.

And IF you did apply RL standards to fiction, you would have to acknowledge that Edwin's crime of binding and forcing a fully sentient being to give him information violated just as much consent as TCK putting that bracelet on Edwin. And that Monty was just as "predatory" as The Cat King, if not more so. The Cat King, at least, never lied to Edwin, while everything about Monty was a lie from the start.

[antimony-medusa]

Okay because I keep seeing these posts, I am just gonna cartwheel in here and say something.

It is not inappropriate to be attracted to real people.

Like, entirely setting aside the question of if you think a fantasy character block men is hot, if you are looking at the photos of a real streamer and you've got hearts in your eyes, I can't overemphasize how normal that is. You're good. Don't worry about it.

These people are funny, and they have good voices, and we watch them be entertaining for hours at a time. This is prime real estate for a little crush. And having a crush is fine, the question is about your behaviour once you have a crush.

I am seeing people thinking that having a crush on a streamer means they're dangerously parasocial, or somehow predatory, or abusive, and that ever breathing a word of it is basically sexual harassment. And like, no. Being attracted to real people is not weird. That's arguably less weird than being attracted to fictional characters. The only question is like, once you know that you want to smooch the real person, how do you then treat that person and the people around you?

Seeing a photo of a famous person and thinking "oh hell yeah I want to hold their hand": this is a celebrity crush. I am aroace and I've spent enough time in some people's streams that I start to go "oh man I wonder if they'd like if if we played D&D together" (medusa-flirting). This has happened to regular people looking at attractive famous people probably since someone in the cave man clan was a particularly good hunter and got praise for it. Thoughts in your head don't hurt people. This is fine.

Seeing clips of a famous person and having sexual thoughts about them: this is still a celebrity crush. Your average boring office worker does this with movie stars. Half the people on the bus are doing this with instagram influencers. Runnning a nice r-rated movie in your head is fine, and doesn't hurt anyone. Thoughts in your head still dont' hurt people. This is still fine.

Collecting photos of a famous person and going GOD they're hot to your friends where the famous person won't see it: still a celebrity crush. There is a standing joke in I don't know how many healthy relationships that your partner gets a certain amount of freebies where you could totally cheat if it's Idris Elba, because it's IDRIS ELBA, that's not cheating that's just sense. You can aknowlege someone's sexiness to your friends, and even joke about it, and you're not being predatory, and you're not being inappropriate. Desire is not a crime. People can publically talk about being attracted to a person, and as long as they're not making it that person's problem, they're fine. Having a "hot people" tag on your blog with careful photos gathered from someone's public instagram where they deliberately posted photos of themselves looking hot? I can't over emphasize how fine this is. If people don't want to see hot people on their dash I guess they can unfollow? But you're literally being totally appropriate still.

Getting a nice private group chat with friends who like to talk abouta famous person and talking about how you'd like to knock him up: Look, what else are group chats as adults for? Are you seeing a trend here? As long as you are keeping your attraction to yourself and not making it other people's problem, as long as you're not bothering the real person with it, as long as you aknowledge to yourself that this is never going to happen and this is just a fun fantasy, this is just like, how attraction works. See pretty person, talk about pretty person, have fun with the fictional imaginings you're having— as long as you're not forcing this imagining on someone else, making it their problem, trying to make it real, as long as you know the difference between fiction and real life, you're fine.

Going up to someone's chat and talking about their dick: This is where you cross the line.

Putting NSFW work in someone's fan art tag. Wearing a shirt with porn on it to a meet and greet. Untagging your fanfic so that people who want to read g-rated works about someone are confronted with e-rated works. Asking one of their friends about their relationship status and if they smell good. This is the bad stuff. Don't do THAT. Keep it away from the real person.

The problem is not the attraction, the problem is forcing the attraction on other people. Like, use your brain. There's a segment of attraction that you can put on main, and then there's a segment that you can put on main but you'd better be sure that the person you're talking about is not going to see it, and then there's a segment you should keep for the group chat, but that's just a very basic sliding scale of "how sexual am I being" correlated with "how private am I being about this". If you want to run a full on porn video in your head starring Wilbur Soot, you're not bothering other people with that, you're not being inappropriate. That becomes inappropriate if you are a) putting that in tags where people who don't want to see the porn video would see it b) talking to Wilbur Soot about it. Those are the boundaries. Wait also c) talking to Wilbur Soot's friends about it, don't do that either.

If the person you're attracted to is an adult famous person, like, people being attracted to them is just part of the landscape. I promise an adult celebrity is not sitting in their room being traumatized because people might be thinking about them romantically or sexually. Putting it up in their faces? Bad. Very bad. I hate it. Don't do it. But I see people freaking out about thoughts. Thoughts aren't real. They do not exist in the real world. You can do what you fuckin' want in your thoughts and you are not hurting people.

Like I know we don't want to be inappropriate with streamers, but that doesn't mean that any sexual or romantic thoughts about them are forbidden, or that mild "GOD he's cute" or picspams on main are hurting people, or that off in a closed group of fellow adult enthusiasts you can't be like "so I think streamer would be submissive if I was domming him" and everyone can be like "oh you'd dom him so well". As long as you're keeping it away from people who are bothered by it, you're fine.

Attraction to real people is normal and how attraction works. You're not hurting people if you think they're cute. You're not hurting people if you want to fuck them, either, as long as you're not making them interact with that desire. This is just a simple matter of keeping the higher-rated material away from the people involved.

Attraction to real people isn't inappropriate. You're fine.