#going to log off for a bit

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

Hey guys!

Pretty sure izzy got shot where Stede stabbed him in his ep 1 dream.

[porto-rosso]

barbara trying to integrate cass into civilian life via boys and reading when all she had to do was sign her up for amateur rugby

[funsizedshark]

pacing around in circles muttering to myself about daniel and louis and the years between the first interview and now...... daniel telling armand "he didn't even want me in the end" after offering to get on his knees for him instead... they didn't fuck but for decades "i really thought we did" / "do you want to now?"... daniel is old and dying in a penthouse full of impossibly young beautiful immortal beings and louis still laughingly offers something that daniel thought for years he'd gotten already. and then it turns out that not only he didn't, but something in him had assumed they did have sex and never explored that further and he's gone through this entire second interview so far under that assumption because that bridge has been crossed already. except it hadn't and when louis says "do you want to now" you can see the change in his expression like for the briefest of moments he really is considering it

[lavernius]

Locus and Lopez vs. dehumanization and seeing your own humanity through someone else

AKA 1.5k words worth of me trying to justify a random pairing I've been trying to sell people on for 5 years. Feat. a lot of my own introspection on both characters, CW for mentions of abuse.

It's kind of easy to assume that Locpez as a ship only exists because Locus is one of the few people who understands Lopez and one of even fewer who has had an actual (off-screen) conversation with him with full mutual fluency, especially since they interact directly, like, twice in canon (Objects In Space and the "Holy shit he's bilingual" scene from The Federal Army of Chorus). To be honest, that was my initial reason for shoving them together whenever I got into RVB and there was literally no content for them because no one was really considering them together in any capacity but a brief, funny passing interaction.

I do think language is an inherent motivator in their relationship with each other. It's a catalyst. Spanish, of course, is perhaps the most obvious thing they share--Locus being a Latino man and Lopez being the same in a convoluted and meta-racist metaphor. Beggars, choosers: anyone who knows how I operate knows I lean into reclaiming their depictions for my own brown person machinations. For Lopez it's the beauty of meeting someone who not only understands him, but isn't going to belittle him for the language he speaks or imply it'd be easier if he learned English. Locus will just listen to him talk and respond without commenting on the language barrier; Lopez isn't exotic or abnormal or "broken" for it, he just speaks Spanish, big deal, Locus speaks it too.

For Locus, it leans more toward reminding him of who he used to be when he was a simpler and kinder person. His culture seems like a forgone part of himself in many ways, but even if only because he's so distant from his humanity that he doesn't remember HOW to embrace his culture, or what the point of cultural pride even is. Lopez is like, reverse culture shock for him, where Locus is very familiar with Spanish as a language--grew up with it, learned it young, whatever, he canonically understands it and given he's Latino it's easy to assume it could be his native language--but has divorced himself from it so much to be malleable to his abusers that hearing someone speak it so unabashedly feels new. It's the lack of it that makes it so foreign, but it's so ingrained into him that it's easy for him to just slip back into it.

And Lopez being so stubbornly proud of what he is plays into that language dynamic, yes--now that there's someone who will listen and not judge, he has room to be adamant and own his monolingualism, and having someone as aggressively, straightforwardly prideful as Lopez forces Locus to recognize the beauty in the language too--but it applies on a grander scale, which is what I suppose the point of this post is: Locus and Lopez don't just share Spanish, but also histories of abuse and dehumanization, of being overlooked as living, thinking things in favor of taking advantage of their skills. And the results of this abuse manifest differently in both of them, but they're alike in just enough ways that their differences stimulate each other into bettering themselves and reflecting on what makes them, dramatic pause, human.

Some of Lopez and Locus's defining personality traits to me are their shared low empathy (forcibly learned on both of their parts) and the way they feel so alien in any group they're a part of. They're people with a lot of potential who don't care how others see them (at their worst, especially in Locus's case), but are limited by someone who only sees them for their usefulness (Sarge, Felix) and doesn't truly see them as a person. Lopez may be a Red, but they don't really care about anything he says, so he's just a wrench to them. Locus has Felix, but he doesn't recognize that Felix has one-sided power over him and is keeping him on a short leash; he's a shield and a weapon. They're tools, they don't have feelings, and if they realize as much it's a fault in their programming, they can and have to be steered back into place.

They're reflective of each other in this way. However, they're not identical in disposition: Locus resigns very easily to what he's told to be. He had more hope once, made attempts to be humanitarian, but was swiftly taught that kindness is suicide and that the point is to survive, no matter the cost. It was easy for Felix to take advantage of him by saying they needed each other when Locus was at his worst, because having kindness ripped out of him gave Locus little else to rely on but his hands. Locus has no room for questions, because a rulebook is absolute. It takes a reminder of what he used to be to make him falter, but even when Santa is showing him one of the inciting incidents of his "soldier" mindset, Locus can't stop himself from resigning to the mindlessness that Felix and the UNSC have already taught him.

Lopez feels trapped and is hyper-aware of it. He'll listen, but only because there's nothing else in the world for him. He's subservient but not in the same way Locus is, because he's angry about his situation: he knows it's not fair, but what can he fucking do about it? He was made to be Red Team's mechanic, and every word he says falls on deaf ears. He carries this self-awareness like a shield, like a threat: he could do something, but there's no point because his nature as a robot defines him. All he has is a sharp tongue and his hands, and the Reds only need one of those things from him. He revels in being able to complain and reminds himself that he's meant for something greater, but he's so fatalistic that he won't take action.

The balance comes from this anger. They're so alike in how they see the world and how much life has mistreated them, but they don't fully understand each other despite it. Locus sees Lopez as privileged for having a team because Locus has never had people to belong with, but he doesn't understand that Red Team isn't a safe place for Lopez. Lopez thinks Locus is misguided for letting himself believe he could ever be reduced to a mindless weapon, because Lopez has only ever been an object and Locus can't comprehend what that's really like. They see each other for their imperfections first and foremost and it frustrates them mutually: "You could've fixed this sooner, you could've escaped the grief, why didn't you try?"

It's this back-and-forth that they both need in order to reflect on themselves. They're harsh people who don't want to be coddled and admonished, but they're not making forward motion on their own because they're both stubborn and tend to decathect before they even recognize they CAN feel. They refuse to see themselves as human, but they can only see the humanity in each other, and they're both so alike that it could make them hypocrites. For a robot, Lopez's anger is so potent that it's alive: Locus sees more feeling in him than he's ever felt in his own life. Locus wants to be a weapon so bad, but he doesn't realize an object doesn't have heart the way he does, doesn't mourn the years it spent under someone's thumb, doesn't want to fix itself.

They're both brutally honest and they both need brutal honesty. They get along WELL by nature of being as similar as they are, but they argue so much because they want to understand each other and don't realize they already do. They're mapping details of their reflections. It's great: Locus is so hurt that he can only see the damage he causes, Lopez is difficult to hurt and notoriously good at fixing things. Lopez wants true accountability and retribution and Locus has cultivated complicity and guilt to perfection.

After Felix, Locus needs room to command his own life and put others in place when they overstep his boundaries, but he's scared of becoming Felix, so he also needs an anchor to keep him grounded in reality and reasonable. Lopez has never had real control over his own life before and would kill to have the power to make small choices and do as he wants, but he's a very private person who also needs a lot of space to work. They balance each other out and know the other's limits so well that they can easily go "You're hurting yourself and I'm not going to let you get away with it."

It's about understanding yourself through someone else and vice versa. Realizing that you share so much that if they deserve good, you do too. Reclaiming pain, experiencing freedom, finding support. They will deconstruct each other to the metal and muscles and rebuild one another over and over again, and they'll never get it perfectly right, but they're both going to learn more and more as they go. Flawless navigation of a road you've driven a million times, forward and back, potholes and all.

[kweenkatsuki-main]

I’m locking my discord down and will probs no longer be giving it out to people as well as doing a little maintenance and purge on my friends and server list. It’s no hard feelings but I’ve been getting too many of these hacker messages and it’s freaking me out so sorry!

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Yoongi is so….

Ah.

Christ.

Everything about that show was perfect. It’s like he knew exactly what the fandom needed, and now we know they timed the encore dates to match with when 2seok could attend. His band matched his energy and were so fun! Everything about these encore concerts have been nothing short of perfect, and I feel a great deal of pride, respect, and gratitude that Min Yoongi exists. And even more so that BTS exists.

[pushing500]

They were on their way to bed and Buckeye decided it was a good time to strike up a deep conversation.

Bella grew up into an adult (a thirteen-year-old, but it's all same-same in RimWorld), and she has the "hulk" body type, which I admit jumpscared me a little. Still, I look forward to drawing a pigskin Amazonian warrior wearing fancy gowns and using table manners worthy of a princess.

Aha! The perfect opportunity for newly-adult Bella to put her medical skills into practice!

Welcome to the cult, Marty Night Stalker. Nice to see Blackdragon keeping up the tradition of naming his newborn children unnecessarily badass names.

I do like the Millie Mossler and Marty Mossler alliteration for the two siblings, though. Good work on that one, Duchess!

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[mamawasatesttube]

saw someone being wrong about kon on the internet again (i know. shocking) and you are all so lucky i'm sick and feverish and lazy because i DID just seriously entertain the thought of writing up a small essay complete with issue and panel citations about why it's simply incorrect to say that kon never really seemed to reciprocate any sort of crush on tim before geoff/tt03. this is just not true. you dont have to actually ship them but to downplay their importance to each other even in the earliest days is simply incorrect. i'm too tired and achy to bother digging through comics to pull up all the issues that have the bits i want to point at but like... they were both very mutually important to each other from early on. it was in no way shape or form one-sided, whether you want to read that as platonic or romantic. man.

[witchstone]

i mean, i'm sure media literacy - or lack thereof - has a role to play, but i think the huge conservative backlash and rise in puritanical politics plays a much more significant part

[carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich]

Man I really feel like fandom on the internet is becomingly an increasingly toxic place for people who post content. I'm not strictly talking about the DL fandom (and actually as a smaller fandom I think it's been spared from a lot of the nonsense that plagues larger ones these days) but between AI stealing from fics and fanart, a lack of engagement from readers and this growing (and in my opinion concerning) anti-dark content sentiment, I feel like it's a lot harsher of an environment than when I first started posting here.

[aturnoftheearth]

And me i’ll never forget being told to kill myself for going to a supernatural convention freshly 20 and excited to spend a weekend talking about destiel with my friends. It’s like there were demons under my bed waiting for me to get home so they could fucking get me. The destiel therapy appointment became real as fuck

LITERALLY do you remember. us telling everyone after denvercon that the tickets were nonrefundable and we were gonna make the best of it by meeting our beloved friends and spending the weekend with them and seeing if we could infiltrate the impenetrable wall of gay cas silencing. and everyone said “yes do it!!” and we did and we spent the weekend posting and everyone was supportive and having a good time. and then we got home and were immediately told to apologize for going or kill ourselves. and this never happened to anyone else going to cons before or after.

[mellohiizz]

are you doing okay? you've been getting a lot of asks lately lol. plz remember to eat snack, and that its okay to delete asks that you don't want to answer (including this one lol)

leilanising <3

hiii yeah, sorry, i'm taking a little bit of a break for my own mental health at the moment and i barely open tumblr anyway right now. just poppin up to let ppl know i'm okay since i've been getting asked this by a couple of people in my inbox too lol. i have some irl things i need to figure out how to deal with, but i'm mostly okay.

[finexbright]

.

[eywaseclipse]

Alrighty, based off the stress induced rash I have on my cheeks and eyes, I’m going to take that as a sign to log off for a bit. I think it’s one of those situations where it’s going to get worse before it gets better because of outside factors. Tata for now. 🌱

[sysig]

I had a really fun dream recently about a Dwarven Drag Queen and she was super cute!! I love her! (Patreon)