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deans-haunted-baby · 4 years

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The Ones Left Behind

Alrighty time for some truth bombs. I’ve had almost a week to absorb the end of Supernatural and season 15 as a whole. And I think this is the moment where I need to throw in my two cents. For all intents and purposes I won’t go in-depth into 15x20 seeing as that conversation will just open up a whole other can of worms and I don’t need that headache. I have my reasons for being less than indifferent with how the Winchesters’ story concluded. So I won’t go there.

Instead I’ll be focusing all my energies on the unsatisfying conclusions of 4 particular characters. Two of which were main cast members (one that was on the show 12 years and one 4 years) while the other two (played by the same dude) were brought back after a decade long hiatus for a much-anticipated comeback only to be wasted and mangled unfairly by Dabb and his hack horde of a writing staff. Call this a follow up to my last post. If I sound bitter I am because these people don’t have a single clue on how to helm these characters, their relationships or their storylines 😠 Nor do they deserve them.

And yes I’m well aware of Kevin Tran, Rowena, Ketch and several others who got the shaft on this show. Those could be future posts for another time.

But I cannot stress this enough; ADAM MILLIGAN, JACK KLINE, MICHAEL AND CASTIEL ALL DESERVED FUCKING BETTER. There is no arguing these facts, none whatsoever. Not one of these characters deserved that exit to be the final chapter in their story. I won’t do an entire analysis of each character’s arc and role in the show as I’ve already done that in my rant about 15x19. But I will highlight how much season 15 royally screwed over these characters and tossed them aside like trash; as if none of them were ever part of/contributed anything to Sam and Dean’s history/world building of Supernatural’s universe.

*WARNING* This is going to get heated.

Before I dive into the heart of these issues I want to state this is not a “shipping post”. I don’t ship anyone on Supernatural, hopefully this blog has been pretty self-explanatory. So I have no arguments/opinions in those areas. I’ve been a fan of this series for 15 years because of the characters, the familial bonds and relationships formed between characters throughout its run. And I’m well-aware that the Winchesters are the lead protagonists of the show, no need to remind me. These are purely my own thoughts based what I’ve obtained from show canon. Let me just say I can’t get over just how much these writers contradicted and ignored what they put forth in the journeys of these four individuals. its a real headscratcher.

You mean to tell me that after TWELVE DAMN YEARS of Castiel being a rebellious warrior angel, searching for his own identity and meaning in life; making that promise to Kelly Kline about raising Jack as his own/risking his life for him. After sacrificing himself for his son a year ago, acknowledging he was satisfied with his role as a father which restored his faith; that it was all because of/for Dean Winchester?

You mean to tell me that after Michael, THE PRINCE OF HEAVEN and PROTECTOR OF HUMANITY, was locked away in a cage with a human whom he emotionally bonded with for thousands of years (10 years our time); who was abandoned, betrayed and manipulated by his neglectful/abusive father. After choosing free will and aligning himself with TFW for humanity’s sake, just sided with the Earth’s destruction because his little brother called him names?

You mean to tell me that Jack, A THREE YEAR OLD CHILD, who’s barely just beginning his life and spent his entire duration on the show wanting to be normal and not wanting to be special. Connecting and being integrated with humans; a child who’s biggest fear was outliving everyone he ever loved. Is suddenly ready to walk away from his family, his home and his teddy bear; to give up being a kid forever and run the universe?

You mean to tell me that Adam, SUPERNATURAL’S MOST INNOCENT CHARACTER and FORGOTTEN THIRD-WINCHESTER BROTHER, after being eaten by ghouls; pulled away from his mother out of Heaven, manipulated by angels, trapped in Hell for thousands of years because Sam and Dean left him there to rot. After coming back and helping his neglectful siblings save the world only to be ripped away from his best friend and THE ONLY OTHER PERSON who gave a damn about him; is sentenced to a life of loneliness, homelessness and turmoil until he dies and ends up in Hell where he’ll mostly be tortured and turned into a demon?

NO. I DO NOT AND WILL NEVER ACCEPT THIS BULLSHIT!

Season 15 not only manages to contradict itself where these characters are concerned (while assassinating them before the final curtain). But the writers deliberately discarded them before giving us that *sarcasm inserted* epic solo-Winchester conclusion. Regardless of how you feel about Adam, Castiel, Jack or Michael, ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS are connected Sam and Dean’s story and part of Supernatural. And when you throw them away like they mean nothing, you’re essentially throwing away a part of the show’s history. You’re ignoring 15 years worth of story building.

As I said I’m not going to go into 15x20 for reasons, it doesn’t offend me as much as what was done before that finale. Because I think those other show exits really affect 15x20 even worse than people realize. You want to know why, I’ll explain.

Lets start off with Castiel and Jack, OH BOY! We know where they end up; running Heaven and the Earth together which is all fine and dandy. I love my Dadstiel father/son duo being an endgame family unit. But here in lies the problem, we never saw it. Not even a cameo. And technically their onscreen storyline ends at 15x18 and 15x19 which is an ugly, anti-climatic bookend to an incredibly deep relationship that had 4 years of development. First you have Castiel who completely forgets why he made that deal with the Empty to begin with. HIS FUCKING SON. Not to mention it wasn’t about true happiness it was about giving himself permission to be happy; there is a difference. And then you have Jack wandering around next episode, vacuuming up power cause suddenly he’s a machine now, acting like he doesn’t give a shit over losing his dad to an entity HE’S BEEN DREADING ABOUT FOR A FUCKING YEAR.

Towards the end of season 15 I noticed neither of these characters were acting like themselves. Their motivations, their personalities and strong ties to one another had mysteriously dissolved. Castiel became less concerned about the danger his son was facing after 15x15 (what the hell was that in 15x17?) and more about speaking when spoken to by either Sam or Dean. Does he know how Dean truly feels about Jack; proclaiming the child is “not family”? I doubt the in-character version of him would let Jack leave with Dean after that insult. Castiel’s not even worried whether or not his son is alive or safe before he makes the big confession later. And for some reason Jack (who’d become heavily suicidal) was more concerned with clinging to the Winchesters, willing to die for them, instead focusing on himself and the one person who’s shown him nothing but unconditional love and given him strength since birth. Both of these characters are canonically depressed and suffer from low self-esteem that was never resolved which makes me furious.

When Chuck killed Jack at the end of season 14, this devastated Castiel in the first half of season 15. He actually got to grieve that loss throughout the episodes and deal with his anger over it, allowing the audience to anticipate the day they’d be reunited one last time. This part of Castiel’s S15 arc also ironically mirrors Jack’s S13 arc of mourning Castiel’s death until resurrecting him. And when this son finally returned to his father, who got to rescue him, it was such a poignant moment between the two. It was a cathartic payoff after witnessing Castiel in so much pain over Jack. There was so much building up between that Dadstiel reunion in 15x11 and the Empty’s pact in 14x08; this was suppose to be a tragic yet pivotal plot-point in both Jack and Castiel’s stories. And with SPN wrapping up we all expected something BIG. Yet somehow the writers retconned the whole thing by making it all about Dean, which is such a gross disservice to these characters and 4 years of storytelling.

For instance, since 15x18 was Castiel’s exit episode, why wasn’t he allowed to hug his son or Sam goodbye one last time? Why didn’t he have more of a focal role instead of standing around majority of the episode with barely any dialogue as so much precious air time was wasted on frivolous things? Why didn’t he get one last badass fight scene with someone like Death instead of being choked out and tossed around like a powerless mortal? Why did the group need to be split up to begin with when it served no purpose either than that *ugh* moment? Why wasn’t Jack allowed to call Castiel “dad” once before the show ended? He deserved to hear his son address him as dad!

AND WHY THE HELL COULDN’T JACK FEEL CASTIEL’S DEATH THE MOMENT IT HAPPENED?

The show already established to the audience the significant cosmic bond these two characters shared since before Jack was even born. It was so powerful it boosted Castiel’s grace. Jack could remember who Castiel was from the womb and that he’d protected his mother. Not to mention HE FUCKING RESURRECTED CASTIEL OUT OF THE EMPTY ONCE WITHOUT GOD’S POWER. You’re telling me Jack couldn’t feel his dad being taken away forever despite how far apart they were? No, he’d feel it in his heart. Had we’d been given a scene like that at the end of 15x18 (something of substance) with actual grief shown in 15x19 maybe the episode would’ve faired better for them.

That said it wasn’t, because Jack was treated the exact same way in his final exit. Hardly any lines and just a bunch of scenes of him standing/walking around until that pathetic reveal at the lake. HE DOESN’T EVEN GET TO INTERACT WITH JAKE ABEL’S MICHAEL/ADAM which would’ve been a great follow-up to the AU!Michael storyline in seasons 13 and 14. I swear these directors didn’t give Alex and Misha any motivation during their last three episodes and it’s evident in their hollow performances. But why would they when the scripts are basically telling their characters to quickly fuck off so the brothers can have their final outing. Jack doesn’t even behave like himself after he becomes the new God. His personality is apathetic, cold, alien, stiff and way too mature for the 3 year old child so closely connected to his family/the human world. In that moment I saw Alex Calvert not Jack Kline. It’s bad enough he doesn’t get a meaningful farewell but again Castiel, HIS DAD, is a complete afterthought to this kid 🥶

And that’s what we’re left with. Forever. A frigid, hollow ending to one of Supernatural’s most healthy, touching, family dynamics. It makes you wonder what was even the point. I can’t even fully enjoy the fact that its canon Jack and Castiel are together fixing Heaven because of what the show presented onscreen as their last hurrah. It’s not sitting right and it makes 15x20 even less appealing to me.

Moving onto Michael and Adam. Get ready for this. I could rant forever about how dirty my boys were done by this show. How they were discarded in the SPN series finale recap etc. just as they were FOR THE LAST TEN FUCKING YEARS. Was there even a plan going on here or was this just everyone making things up as it went? Their ending is the most unsatisfying and cruel thing because its INCOMPLETE. There is no real closure or resolution with them thanks to the monstrosity that was 15x19. AND NO ONE CARES ENOUGH ABOUT THEM TO GIVE A SHIT.

Much as I’ve enjoyed this show for many years, it NEVER deserved Jake Abel, his talent or his time. I keep seeing so many anti posts about Dean Winchester’s final fate in Supernatural and all I can think about is “try being an Adam Milligan fan for the last decade”. I’ve had to watch this boy go through hell with nothing to show for it either than years of memes. ridicule and the show’s mockery in forgetting him. Actually he’s the ONLY CHARACTER in this series you’re encouraged not to remember 😡 Also quick question: why give us this really interesting and healthy relationship between an archangel and its vessel if nothing was ever going to become of it?

At this point I don’t know why Adam or the idea of him was even introduced way back in season 4 let alone revisited in season 5. Because the only thing I see when I look at this character now is SAD WASTED POTENTIAL. Storylines never explored. Relationships that never got off the ground. Backstory we never got to see (like for instance his past with John Winchester and his time in the cage). A character’s birthright (Men of Letters) that was never actualized. AND the unexplained factor that Adam could look directly at Michael’s true form without his eyes burning out (making him a special case). And the thing is he could’ve been a really great character, both him and Michael. They could’ve easily reached popular status just like Castiel given the chance since Jake is a freaking acting-powerhouse. We were given a taste in 15x08 just how awesome these characters could be and how they could’ve contributed so much to the story and its core group. But unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be.

Michael will never redeem himself after years of scrutiny and being made out to be some kind of unhinged monster. This show constantly enjoyed pounding into our brains how fearsome Michael was. Warned us via Lucifer (LUCIFER, PEOPLE!) that he wasn’t rational, compassionate and didn’t care about anything except war, death and destruction. And that he was incapable of feelings and emotions. This is how Supernatural saw Heaven’s Prince and guardian of the Earth. Christ, they actually did a two-year storyline about an evil Michael from the AU world who enjoyed torturing and killing while trying to destroy the universe. I want to know WHAT THE HELL THIS SHOW’S WRITERS HAD AGINST THESE CHARACTERS? Why they felt the need to bring back Jake Abel, AFTER A DECADE OF FANS WANTING THIS, if it was simply to piss all over his characters one last time before the show wrapped. This is absolutely unprofessional and childish; the fact that Jake is taking this bullshit in stride makes it all the more shameful 😡

We could’ve learned so much more about Michael’s past and his present relationship with Adam. These characters didn’t need to sit in the cage for a decade they could’ve easily been incorporated back into the show as far as season 8 or 10! And been an asset to the Darkness storyline in season 11.There were characters and storylines introduced that served no purpose. Why did we need to keep seeing characters like Charlie Bradbury or (as much as I like him) Crowley or Garth (love him too) or Lucifer or Abaddon or the Wayward sisters? I would’ve much preferred having Adam and Michael around and got to know them instead; especially after 15x08. I would’ve wanted to see what their dynamic with TFW could’ve become had they been long-time allies. Did John ever tell Mary about Adam’s existence? I’d like to see what her reaction would’ve been like had the Winchesters remembered him during that damn 300th episode. I guess that’s another loose end untied.

But because of what Supernatural did to these two characters, it forever taints Sam and Dean. I don’t think Dabb or purist fans realize this. But when new viewers come into this show about two brothers preaching important things like “saving people”, “family first” or “family don’t end in blood” they’re going to see how badly the main protagonists treated their innocent half brother. How Castiel and Jack were treated. They’re going to see the heroes of the story abandoning this kid in Hell forever with no intention of EVER rescuing him. And that’s why their final appearance leaves such a bad taste going into 15x20. Cause as much as Dabb and co didn’t give a shit about Adam and Michael they also didn’t give a rat’s ass about protecting Sam and Dean’s integrity. That’ll be a stain they can’t undo.

So through all of it, we’re stuck with the abomination that is 15x19 aka the eye-soar to an unfinished/unpolished story of two horribly disregarded characters. Michael gets the pleasure of being character assassinated right before he’s stupidly killed off instead of going out a hero or becoming the next God (as it was his birthright and the setup was there in the narrative). And Adam gets killed off-screen, OUT OF HIS OWN DAMN BODY, then brought back by Jack only to live a miserable, isolated existence since his brothers have nothing to do with him (the dog and car are more important); his best friend is dead, he has no job or money or a fucking home and he’s legally dead! Really what is there left for him besides the brutal fate awaiting in Hell when he dies?

SERIOUSLY THEY COULDN’T GIVE US ONE SCENE WHERE THE WINCHESTERS CHECKED IN ON ADAM TO MAKE SURE HE WAS SAFE?! 🤬 His last scene pretty much sums up this shit for what it is. Tragic. I feel like crying for this poor sweet boy.

Congratulations Dabb, BL and co for giving us these much deserved broken story arcs of characters you destroyed and made OOC before leaving the airways. You did your show’s protagonists justice by doing this *sarcasm inserted* after 15 years of being onscreen. I doubt these idiotic decisions are going to age well in the long run. They certainly don’t look good on the Winchesters. Anyway that’s my hot take for the day.

ALL THESE ACTORS AND THEIR CHARACTERS DESERVED BETTER.

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ardenttheories · 4 years

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Your takes on gender can be applied these ways also: 1. Their species could be transphobic solely because they might view gender as unnecessary (which isn’t true, due to so many trolls being trans with no problem, so that’s out the window,) or 2. The Condesce herself or her generation created gender roles on Alternia; it would also make sense with The Signless preaching beliefs of freedom and possibly even expression, if we were to go that route. While it doesn’t fix all, it’s better than nothin

Continuing on with Signless and the Condesce, it would have actually made more sense for Sign to be a Fuchsia if society is based on blood caste, for more than one reason (I mean the political implications of a thief of BLOOD being a tyrannical emperor and what you could do with that are pretty fucking apparent but hey who gives a shit amiright) and while life can be just as politically aligned as blood, the inherent structure of blood and the way it’s broken and set up makes Sign a better fit

The bulge-nook standard is all just a bunch of useless bullshit, but it wasn’t in the past apparently; I think it’s mentioned somewhere in the comic that they’re actually close to extinction because the mother grub method is unsustainable and was created BY the Condesce? And that they actually could procreate together but they’re slowly losing the ability? Therefore you could also say that those who are still able to reproduce via encounters could be labeled differently, but that’s still shit

Continuing once again off of the whole mother grub thing (Sorry I’m spamming your inbox I just really like your think thoughts,) the only reason I could see a troll harboring certain ‘gender’ traits (boobs for example) would be for advantages in different climates, besides possible ovaries which, if trolls are more bug than human-like, don’t even make sense anyway. It’s all just a bunch of crud BUT the argument for being trans lies solely in what could remain, OR societal reconstruction I guess

I suppose HIC could have been the generation to assign gender roles to her society, but my only issue would be this: why? I pointed this out in another anon, but there’s no actual divide into “trolls who are superior for being x gender” and “trolls who are inferior for being x gender”. She’s the empress, so you’d think she’d have a preference for women - but her closest and most valued are both men. And even then, she kills indisciminately between genders. Her only preference I’ve ever seen gender-wise is that she always views women as heiresses (or, people who are possible to take her throne), and even that doesn’t entirely make sense; it can easily be explained away as Hussie trying to build a matriarchy where one just didn’t need to exist, to parallel Alternia and Earth.

To HIC, hemospectrum trumps gender. A male and female rustblood could be standing side by side, both accused of a crime, and neither would be considered more or less guilty on a gendered basis: they’d both be culled for being rust. Likewise, two violetbloods could kill a purpleblood, and the male wouldn’t be more likely to get caught than the female, or viseversa. They’d both get away scot free because they’re highbloods, and higher than the purple they killed - or, they’d both be revenge-slaughtered by other purplebloods.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that, although our canonical legislacerator is female (Redglare), the actual judge (His Honorable Tyranny) is male. So, again, we have a male in power. Yet there’s no explicit bias towards or against men.

It’s this foundational issue for trying to put a gendered system - as we understand it - on a system that just doesn’t work for it. I do very firmly believe that the trolls would have a gender system, yes; but I think it would revolve around something entirely different. More like how bee genders work; if they’re all “female”, then how do you differentiate the “gender” of bees? By focusing on what actually differentiates them societally: their roles in the hive. Queen, worker, drone - these are the bee genders. How you could implement that to Alternians, I’m not totally sure; I’d have to think on that a little more.

The Signless works well as a mutantblood for the martyr status Hussie was going for; he’s a very clear allegory for Jesus as-is, and having him be a fuchsia wouldn’t have really worked in that sense (because he would have been born into an inherent place of power, without the requirement to go through the martyr journey - and he could have much more easily set about a better, more equal structure had he been an heir than he could have being a mutant).

It’s a good way to impose on readers just how violent troll society is against those who don’t fit into the spectrum, since the hemospectrum is a class structure that was instilled by both HIC and Doc Scratch (which doesn’t exist as strictly on Beforus, except that the upper classes look after the lower). It also just allows for the equal “one troll of each caste” motif Hussie wanted to go with. So, again, this is an unfortunate instance of Hussie choosing design over lore.

That said, being a fuchsiablood - or even a mutated fuchsia, if we still want to go down the mutant route - would have been endlessly interesting. It could have completely different to see a not-so-shoddily hidden allegory. How The Signless would have attempted to go against HIC, his abilities as a Blood Player, the potentialities of him still raising a rebellion and attempting to change the entire structure of Alternia to something more Beforean - it’s definitely juicy food for thought, if nothing else.

I couldn’t find anything on the Mother Grub method being instilled by HIC, or the fact that it was unsustainable - at least, not on Alternia. Everything I’ve seen relating to Alternia and Mother Grubs very much seems to state that these are the natural ways of the world, something that wasn’t meddled with (which goes along with a theory I had with a few anons some time ago, under the “#homestuck biology” tag, wherein the Mother Grub, trolls, and Drones are actually all founded from the same ancient species, but the trolls just so happened to be the ones to evolve into intelligent life).

(Edited note: I did find something mentioning that the threat of global extinction allowed for the implementation of the caste system to begin with - as in, the hemospectrum didn’t exist until that specific point in time. It doesn’t mention anything about the Mother Grubs before or after this event, or what caused the near-extinction of the troll race. I would assume Doc Scratch, in order to force the Hemospectrum to exist in the first place, since he takes full credit for its conception. In either case, it isn’t an inability to breed that almost killed off the entire Alternian race - otherwise, even post-Hemospectrum, they would have still died out.)

Anything regarding unsustainability might be instead referring to HIC’s attempts to reintroduce the troll population to the Alpha kids’ Earth; she tries to bring lusii into the world and tries to repopulate Earth using genetic material via the Mother Grub (including for humans), but ultimately fails to do so (partly because her attempts to do so were thwarted by a clone of her lusus, partly because, I assume, human DNA isn’t compatible with the Mother Grubs).

So, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like trolls ever had the ability to mate with each other and reproduce in a more mammalian way. Which I still despise as a concept, if I’m completely honest; the trolls are clearly meant to be based on insects, are surrounded by insect-like evolutionary divergences, and breed in a very insect-like way. The idea that they ever, at any point, had a more mammalian lineage just makes no sense. That’s like saying that we descended from ancient bees instead of ancient apes.

It’s, again, one of those instances were you can tell Hussie tried to make something unique and interesting, but then didn’t fully think it through and returned to what he knew most - which is a very much more human experience.

I think the best explanation for the “gender” differences - beyond “Hussie needed a way to show male and female characters because he didn’t think to include different genders in a society that clearly needed it - probably is the climate concept. It’d be more interesting, for one, and still allow for the potential that trolls don’t have - or show - inherent sexual dimorphism. Especially because, like you said, those are very mammalian traits? Insect-based species don’t have an evolutionary need for those things.

#ardenttheories #homestuck biology #long post//#Anonymous

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gaylotusthatexists · 4 years

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alright @skepticalcatfrog tagged me in this (thank you so much for the tag dude) let’s go

rules: pick ten ships before reading the questions, then answer the questions

1. intrulogical (sanders sides)

2. solangelo (pjo)

3. nick/charlie (heartstopper)

4. catradora (shera)

5. roceit (sanders sides)

6. steven/connie (steven universe)

7. eleanor/chidi (the good place)

8. percabeth (pjo)

9. ellie/lottie (rosewood chronicles)

10. wolfstar (harry potter)

ok aaand the questions!!!

1: Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you started shipping 6?

i’m,,, actually not sure. i wanna say since their introduction but that doesn’t sound like me. maybe from the fusion episode? or maybe an indirect kiss :/

2: Have you ever read a fanfiction about 2?

bitch i have written solangelo fic

yes, yes i have, many many times

3: Has a picture of 4 ever been your profile picture/screensaver/Tumblr?

nope :)

4: If 7 were to suddenly break-up today, what would your reaction be?

D: i’d be very sad. please no. it was hard enough watching them lose their memories of each other so many times in the show please don’t make them have to break up again

5: Why is 1 so important?

listen i just think they’re neat. recently i’ve been on an intrulogical high ok i don’t even ship them in the concept of the show but maybe i just wanna be hugged by remus and logan is apparently a vessel for that :/

6: Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

completely serious. i love them ok.

7: Out of all of the ships on the list, who has the most chemistry?

this is so difficult what the fuck

i. refuse to answer. all of them.

8: Out of all the ships on the list, who has the strongest bond?

this is so difficult as well aaaaa uhhh probably eleanor/chidi they’ve been through so much together

9: How many times have you read/watched 8's source material?

i’ve read the main pjo series all the way through twice i think? maybe three times? i’m not sure. some of them i’ve probably read three or more times.

10: Which ship has lasted the longest?

uhhhh idk. i think from this list percabeth was probably the first one i started shipping?

11: How many times, if ever, has 2 broken up?

i mean, in canon they haven’t, but i feel like nico is the kind of person to fake break up with will out of spite and then get back with him the next morning.

12: If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

oh uhhh can they not work together?

aaa idk. probably solengelo honestly, percabeth would probably do some dumb shit

13: Did 5 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

they’re not canon but i feel like at first they’d probably have to hide their relationship, but it wouldn’t last long :)

14: Is 4 still together?

heck yeah babey (still cannot believe it’s canon ngl)

15: Is 3 canon?

yes!!!!!!! everyone go read heartstopper right now

16: If all 10 ships were put into a couple's Hunger Games, which couple would win?

uhhhh i reckon intrulogical bc remus does not give two shits he is definitely down for murder

17: Has anyone ever tried to sabotage 10's ship?

yup, she who must not be named fuck off jkr all of your characters are trans and gay

18: Which ship would you defend to death and beyond?

...all of them?

imma say ellie/lottie bc. they cute. and from the looks of it (and what i know about our queen connie glynn) it’s probably gonna be canon

19: Do you spend hours a day going through 1's Tumblr page?

maybe not hours and definitely not daily but i do take a peak sometimes

also tho if anyone has any intrulogical fics they like feel free to send them my way i’m desperate

20: If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she'd break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

aaaa fuck uhhh imma probably have to say percabeth, i love them but just not as much as i love the rest of this life :’)

anyway, this was fun!!! imma tag @theloveliestsweetspongy @bluekit-kat and @underworldystuff aaaand anyone who feels like doing this honestly just say i tagged you haha

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viktormaru · 5 years

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okay here’s my full character analysis??? Headcanons???? canon retelling with my shit slapped on??? on

VIKTOR LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

(under read more cause its gonna get long)

Viktor is said to be born in the borders of the Entresol level of Zaum (aka the middle), but I’m guessing that means the lower border because of how often he’d have to move or stay away from home due to accidents.

I assume Viktor had good parents. They were artisans and seemed to encourage his creative pursuits with robotics and so on. (I also believe he is trans and that his parents supported him in that as well haha).

So yes, we have this child who likes building things. And he lives in this place that is not healthy or safe for the people that live there. His parents probably go to the upper levels to work and Viktor gets a glimpse of a better place there. He sees where he’s at and at first, he is motivated by both kindness and frustration. He is a child with a passion and all these leaks and accidents are getting in the way! So he starts studying to see what he can do. Time passes though and he realizes the extent of those things, the casualities of those humam errors. So he takes his work more seriously and soon he is producing results. But of course no one takes a teen seriously, no matter how good he is.

Until someone does and it works. His inventions are good! So he keeps doing it! He’s awkward and socially anxious but he really LOVES building things so he does it and sells his work to the factories until he gets the attention of the Zaun academy of techmaturgy (this is canon btw).

He goes into the academy and he’s.... awkward... Like, Zaun is full of weird people sure but Viktor is pretty bad at talking about anything but robotics and stuff and comes off as blunt often, so he’s kinda isolated by his peers. He doesn’t mind, he’s there to study. But professor stanwick approaches him with interest in his work and Viktor is happy he is recognized by a professional. He’s a little naive back then and trusts his teacher a lot. Which is why he is convinced to move to Piltover, despite a bit of his reluctance to leave his home. His parents wave him goodbye and he leaves.

He moves to Piltover and gets a better lab, more tools, more money and more people to help. His work just improves in time and he’s put to work with a lot of people. He once again fails incredibly of socializing properly and falls into isolation yet again (hello darkness my old friend). People end up working with him either because he’s really the best option or because they can stand him for the time he is needed {:- (

Well, that is, until he works with Jayce. Jayce is infurating and doesn’t do things the way Viktor likes doing and has this weird outlook on how things are done that sometimes just works despite it all. He’s a puzzle that doesn’t make sense and the two end up doing a lot of things together. And having a lot of discussions. A LOT of them. They are both kinda lonely. But its like.. they don’t dislike eachother?? Because they kind skipped some steps in how socializing usually goes so it just kinda worked.

They could’ve kept going, getting comfortable in eachother’s spaces until they could just go out to chill together or something but neither of them was brave enough to try it (or smart enough to realize that could be good).

But then at this time that awful chem spill happened in Zaun in the entresol level and Viktor rushes home to help.

I’d say this is where Viktor’s character starts like, solidifying I guess? Because I think for the first time, as a grown mature person, Viktor is seeing death and suffering with his own eyes. Death and suffering that could’ve been avoided. He’s watching all these people die and suffer and he can only do so much to repair the damage. If only it could’ve been avoided, could’ve been stopped. He knows it’s possible. Why didn’t anyone do it?

He doesn’t find his parents either.

So he spends the next several months throwing all his energy and sanity into doing whatever he can to help these people. He builds blitzcrank and they fix evertyhign they can. It’s a fucking CHEM spill, can you imagine just how AWFUL it all was?? people were dying for several weeks after the accident , even after the damage to the structures were already fixed. These people were slowly suffering around him and he was trying and they kept dying around him. These are workers, families. It’s a pretty bad situation.

He learnes how to infuse mechanical parts with flesh in an astonishing way just to try to replace the rotten, sick parts of the people around him. Get rid of the parts that were kiling them.

And then! He finally goes back to Piltover, after it all, and the first thing he gets is the news that Stanwick stole credits on his invention of Blitzcrank.

Like.. the emotional toll of it all? He’s tired! He’s burdened with the ammount of death he saw and people wanna be shitty and play games like that for glory and fame! It’s stupid and he doesn’t understand it! He tries to fight for his right and loses because no one really bothered to support him through it (Jayce didn’t think he’d really have to and would you look at that).

He’s angry and upset and grieving and possibly traumatized. He keeps wondering why would people do that to eachother and comes up empty. So he’s here, obsessing with replacing every part of human error to garantee that people WILL live. Of course, he’s more isolated then ever and people don’t bother to sit down and listen, they just think he’s weird and obsessed and stuff like that.

So when he needs to do the colaboration on the dive suits with Jayce and they have their fight about free will, people side with Jayce quickly. They think Viktor is mad and they had seen it coming miles away.

He gets fucking expelled from the Piltover academia and sent back to Zaun.

To his ruined home, alone, with nothing but his name and his thoughts.

Clearly that leads him into a deep depression. After all, he lost everything but he doesn’t understand why ! because sure these people in piltover like acting high and mighty and theorizing and politicizing but they didn’t have to watch children crying because they were coughing so much blood was coming out because their lungs were corroded and they wouldnt last another week. They thought viktor was mad.

And viktor had a lot of time to wallow over it, and think about his failures and suffer on his own and he’s actual conclusion is that negative emotions ( envy, pride, sadness) clouded people’s judgemetns. They’d let others suffer for their own gain out of fear of losing.

He thought that himself feeling sadness was just another obstacle to do what he had to: save people.

So he basically starts operating on himself until he can barely feel emotions anymore, removing his own happiness with it (but its not like he felt it anyway so what difference did it make). And then he starts plunging into work like never before, dedicated to this new cause that is the glorious evolution. He starts again from the bottom and once again he rises, because Viktor is a genious, and he is honest in his work, in his intentions. He wants to help.

People were scared of the Mad Man Viktor, but Viktor would do anything he could to save you if you came to him. He understood limits though, he never imposed over people. Do no harm, as they say ( what would be the point of doing that?? )

And then the other toxic even happens in Sump, another really bad one, and Viktor rushes in to help. He’s keeping these people alive in his lab but he knows he doesnt have the power to keep them so. So he goes to Jayce after an energy source.

He thinks Jayce will listen to him now, now Viktor isn’t emotive and easily hurt, now he isn’t insecure, he has a cause, he has something he fights for. A brighter tomorrow.

And Jayce calls him mad.

Viktor is kind of dissapointed, he’d think Jayce, who has always been so uncaring of people’s opinion’s would at least try to understand. He doesn’t. So he takes the crystal by force from Jayce (petty arguments can be saved for later, those people on his lab needed him NOW).

When Jayce follows him there with a hammer he understands the stakes.

One life against hundreds is an easy math. Viktor chooses to sacrifice Jayce (Jayce chose to come here after all)

But then Jayce actually destroys his lab.

And like... imagine waking up to your laboratory destroyed, just dozens of corpses of innocent people laying around. yet another failure, yet another big price to pay.

He has to start from zero again. His reputation is completely stepped on ( he is truly crazy now by everyone’s eyes) and Jayce is a hero. Blitzcrank sticks around for a little while, moved by the same passion to help people, but blitzcrank can stand the deaths and the gruesomeness of viktor’s work, he leaves to try to help in other ways. Viktor lets him of course, blitz has free will and he isn’t anyone to stop him.

Some people, desperate people, still come to him for help. He does his best to give them what they need. A strange cult forms and idolizes him, he hates it, he is no god, he is just another man. People thinking of him as an etheral being just proves his theory on how fear and wayward emotions lead to dumb, dangerous mistakes.

In the end, Viktor is trying to cheat suffering, cheat death at all costs.

I don’t believe he sent any golems or anything after Jayce, vengence is way too beneath him. Stealing? Maybe not, depends. I think Jayce became a bit paranoid after “defeating” viktor. Because Viktor said some big words and Jayce is suddenly realizing that truly, he has no purpose. He’s just a useless tool. He makes things sure, but what for? He’s raised as a hero but damn he doesn’t feel like it.

And to end it all, this is why I think Ekko and Viktor should sit down and chat at some point. They are so similar and so different all at once. They both love Zaun and its people, they both wanna protect them and have a passion for inventing. But while Viktor wants to reject his human side to achieve his goals, Ekko embraces it. Like, I don’t think Viktor shouldn’t even be his mentor, more like his colleague. Ekko is his own person and has a different way of doing things, but they could do a lot together as well.

Also Ekko and Blitz are totally friends in canon so like.. yeah.. Zaun for life....

Anyway this is it thank tou all for reading this is UUUH like 1,8k words long

extras or stuff I already said and will say again:

viktor is trans

he was an anxious yet hopeful (and maybe a bit naive) teenager

he still loves sweet things and thats canon.. he likes chilling sometimes

workaholic as seen

blames himself for literally everything like a dumbass

is kinda of very afraid of death in general

is not the kind of person that steals children to experiment on them cmon guys thats propaganda

is embarrassed of the cult following him

i guess he doesnt have his whole left arm anymore, chop chop it went

USED braces as kid

loves blitzcrank like a son, doesnt realize it

I think thats all, sorry yall

#league of legends #viktor #VIKTOR META #sdfjiusdfjsdf yea i wrote this nonstop forgive me

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bigowlenergy · 6 years

Text

Notes on Gender, Ethnicity, and Culture

At the heart of the etoneki conflict/drama is nothing more than culture clash.

Eto may be amazing at studying others and have replicated humanity well enough to be a respected author among humans without anyone finding any clues to her ghoul nature, not even Haise in RE: - but she is still someone who was raised by ghouls. Her base nature is as a ghoul, from the 24th ward specifically. Naturally, there’s going to be some confusion between her and Kaneki, who was raised by humans.

But that leaves the good good question of what those differences should be. Clearly, some should be tiny, but there NEED to be huge misunderstandings bc I live for that kind of drama. Also, it’s a slowburn, so. that’s how it is.

this is long, and tagged for spoilers for a good reason. nothing specific, but if u like being surprised by the plot in ur grapefruit, go no further as of chapter 5

1) Ghouls have ABO while humans do not. Sure, there was a decently long time where Kaneki lived among ghouls, but can u picture early chapter Touka willingly sitting him down and giving the birds and the bees and the grasshoppers and also the spiders Talk? I think not. Maybe Kouma? Itori would. Like, they’d both kill him dead with it, but they would. And knowing the contexts within another culture doesn’t mean that you have assimilated those words/concepts to your own yourself, or that you actually know every single social detail, especially as it applies to others.

...but Eto does. And human gender/sexuality is fairly simple on the whole, except when it isn’t, so she has a leg up on him there.

plus, the way I have the ABO structured, it makes a bit more sense for him to be less aware of it, since his gender, as perceived by ghouls, is the most privileged one. Especially since its associated with deliberate power gain, which he totally played into during the later half of the first TG, so it would be a natural assumption for ghouls to make that he understood that he was acting exactly as his gender is socially expected to. and in a way that would socially cement his powerful omega status.

Tsukiyama would totally say something about it, since with the whole affluent family thing he’d probably be very aware of gender and social dynamics, but anything shuu says can be followed by “and he called me a cabbage in French last week, so okay shuu, whatever poetics ‘omega’ means to u, go ahead, have your fun buddy.” Banjou, who was involved with Rize, would be too worried about offending him or making it embarrassing to say anything. and as a ghoul even lower than shuu, he’d be super conservative about getting up in an omega’s business. It would just be this ambiguous open secret that everyone but Kaneki is totally, painfully aware of. the gasmask trio find this hilarious. Hina is a wee bab whose parent was a doctor for ghouls, so she just accepts her big bro as is.

so there’s eto’s expectations to be basically an underling to someone powerful as a normal, comfortable relationship dynamic, pitted against kaneki’s human-embedded inclination toward monogamy and not something that feels like weird bdsm domination stuff. they each are expecting a certain treatment from one another, and not getting it. eto feels neglected, since he isn’t all in her business and allowing her to settle in the shadow of his power and just ride things out, and kaneki, with only human expectations for sex, gender, and whatever the hell just happened, expects the worst from her as the “““male”““ in the relationship who manipulated him.

the conflict is that neither happens.

all of the power is on his side of the court, but in human terms, it feels like the opposite - vis a vis, human misogyny and all the horrible expectations for a sex and reproduction based marriage system that go along with that.

which is why i’ve inverted all that to make myself feel better :)

2) i kicked knots out bc idk about that business, but there have to be other physical differences. there have to be, or its boring. and then again, since both are hybrids, what should either have?

i’ve decided eto will have all physical differences or a learned equivalent due to ghoul socialization, while kaneki should have none but whatever was forced on him through his kakuhou - ie, pheromone stuff, but nothing more.

ghouls can purr, bc i am weak to that shit. Kaneki is aware of this. it’s just a Thing that they do. he’s read to Hina and she’s fallen asleep purring before and it was adorable. irimi purrs very quietly when she cleans things. uta is a purr machine when he makes masks, and it knocks yomo out unless he’s drunk, then he just purrs like a truck engine from the floor near uta’s desk for three hours. touka hasn’t purred since ayato left

eto purrs when she’s satisfied with her writing flow, which is one of the main reasons she prefers to work alone in her apartment and keep shiono out. otherwise, she doesn’t mind company. she also purrs when happy, like most ghouls. kaneki does not. i can site Haise’s RC scan on this: since he never took damage to the throat, he never had a chance to heal ‘more ghoul’ in that area.

so the exchange of a happy eto, deeply content with their uneasy peace, purring to express such delight, meets a blank wall that doesn’t agree. her social expression of happiness clashes up against kaneki only maybe leaning toward physical affection and being quiet. he can understand that she is happy, and she can understand that he can’t respond in the same way, but the dynamics of their relationship make her doubt her actions and get instinctually afraid of doing something wrong and upsetting someone much more powerful than her who also decides if she is allowed to reproduce with him or not. and stops purring and gets unsettled. kaneki is only confused and maybe she doesn’t like being touched? time to touch less. oh no, she did do Something Wrong and now omega is mad at her!! interpersonal drama escalates on both sides >:3c

ghouls have great night vision. kaneki also does and you know why. youve read the series. full ghouls have tapetum lucidum in both eyes, but eto only has it in her single ghoul eye. her vision is unbalanced in the dark but due to her learning to compensate for the slight reduction in light capture on one side she gets by just fine. it also parallels nicely with arima’s poor eyesight and learning to compensate for it.

ghouls are crepuscular while humans are diurnal, but this doesn’t matter since neither of etoneki know what a sleep schedule is. and the 24th ward doesn’t experience day/night cycles, so they have their own issues with sleeping when safe, do not sleep when not safe.

ghouls tend toward pack structure, but not in a rigid way where there can only be one omega/powerful ghoul per unit. as long as everybody gets along personally, its fine. omega don’t see each other as competition. alpha toss themselves at their feet without prompting. they’re not a scarce resource. alpha don’t even really fight over omega unless completely affected by heat and rut cycles and unable to grasp the concept of maybe next time. but even that is rare, mostly only those who are jealous as a person attempt this. if alpha fight over an omega and one wins, the omega might just kill them for taking away some of their prospects, or might be impressed by the show of strength. or annoyed by it, bc they want weak underlings. depends on the person. (eto is more than a bit possessive, at least for his first heat.)

more on this point as i think of it.

3) I haven’t specified kaneki’s personal gender identity for a reason. that reason is that i’m not sure what direction i want to go. this is strictly for maman, not Sugar, which is trans girl Sasako forever. for this piece of feti/sh garbage? whom knows! (I know. and until word of god says otherwise - i’m god - every character is trans.)

but really, there’s options. and i love them all.

A) kaneki was trans all along. hide is best bi bud. aunt was a bitch, but nothing worse than canon since he was closeted at the time, although he doubly prepared to never speak to her again. (true neutral)

B) woke up a ghoul and with new parts. why believe a species change but not a sex change, eh? heightens the early game confusion and search for id as a person whose major ids have changed against his will. (lawful neutral)

C) gradual transformation. like how he came into his strength as a ghoul slowly. read a doujin like this once. was okay. quality art, big titties, 8/10. ngl would read the sequel. (Perhaps I am writing the sequel? aren’t we all just chasing our Brands across the lonely internet, hopping from one computer virus to the next? maybe u die reading hentai, or u live long enough to see urself post to ao3.) (chaotic neutral)

D) heals himself a new set of parts due to intense damage. see the haise RC chart, which has a ton of pathways around the hips/torso area. parallels with cutting eto in half?? (also lawful neutral)

E) started happening as a transformation when eto’s pheromones triggered his heat cycle for the first time. boy would he be pissed at her X2 lmao (lawful evil)

F) transformation during #240 time due to losing all memory and only having instinct to structure his body with, and just enough RC pathways to make a hormone based transformation possible. Chiba would have had a field day, but also would have torn out his horrible bowl cut in confusion. get rekt bud. not even #240 knows wtf goin on (neutral evil)

G) maybe he just wanted a vag! thought about that?? learns he is supposed to be able to manipulate his flesh like his kagune, which he is canonically great at, and just Goes For It. it works. he is a strong, dependent idiot who don’t need no dick. (iconic)

H) same as above, but that’s just what Haise does when he has the reigns. looks deep into his pastless self and asks ‘do i have to put up with this cis nonsense? not today.’ (chaotic iconic)

I) it happens suddenly when he activates his kakuja for the first time. queer the monster transformation u wish to see in the world. just. so confused. but also there’s Guilt to be felt about banjou and amon and such, so that’s back burner. (chaotic evil)

okay, so in like fifteen minutes i was able to name 9 perfect opportunities for ishida to carry though the motif of 1)iding with female ghouls 2)paralleling with canon trans man mutsuki 3)litcherally having a female ghoul organ donation fiasco 4)being associated with vacillating between masculine yang and feminine yin black/white 5)having a narrative that revolved around accepting his body and learning to find his own strength and id that is different than what he was born with - but coward ishida stopped sixty miles short of the mark. fool. I Cannot Feast Upon Crumbs, Sir. Sir, You Have Given Me Airplane Peanuts For Supper. Sir, I Am Starving And Antagonistic At Best.

(i shouldn’t call him a coward. three huge series magically having the same Wife And Kids ending all during the time shinzou abe is in office? probably not a coincidence. hope they got a good payout for it. i’d sell out for that $$$ too tbh)

eto is just an alpha. her human social id is a Normal Human Female Who Is Totally Cis and Straight for maximum social acceptance and ease of integration, but that’s only her mask. her personal id is an alpha, which is cis by ghoul standards, and she uses she/her pronouns bc she feels like it. she has the power to id as above alpha, but she enjoys the social invisibility it gives her, since she can blend in the background whereever and noone looks at her presumably weak ass twice. like chie, but for nefarious purposes.

....does that make her the equivalent of a ghoul feminist? i’m getting Too Deep

4) the wards can be isolated and far apart, and its been explored in canon with the Three Blades family and the white suites - congrats u 2 - and ghoul organizations that have a home ward having distinct cultural differences from one another. small ethnic groups and isolated diaspora? natives? subset?? of whatever the 24th ward ghouls - sorry, tokyo humans - are.

this sort of thing is only tangentially related to kaneki. if someone with a texas accent teaches someone to speak english, that person will have that accent, whether they’v ever been to texas or not. so he has some of the social mannerisms of a 20th ward ghoul, but generally still has a lot of ingrained human attributes to confuse them.

5) i’m still fascinated by the half finished thought about there are just some ghouls who become binge eaters in canon. like Rize wasn’t special for it. I think shinohara mentioned this?? but. it makes sense. general food insecurity, lack of permanent social support, total oppression, absurd power levels, plenty of humans to take it out on...ye.

and kaneki has the kakuhou of an adult binge eater. there’s cool hints of the kakuhou being parasitic, so a mature one would def fall into the biological fulfillment of binge eating for strength and carry that genetic knowledge into a new host. and from there, it would induce cravings, serotonin reward systems, and all that good stuff to get what its come to like.... like, mayhaps, a cordycepts? ;)

well, i’ve put ‘binge eater’ down as just a general omega trait, since it feels authentic to do so, so we’ll see what i do with this in the future. i will also see, since i too am ignorant of my own self. what will my horny subconscious do next? i am usually the last to know.

anyway,

peace

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chroniccombustion · 6 years

Text

Caught in the Grey (ch 2)

Genre: Trans!AU, hurt/comfort, romance, angst with a happy ending Rated: T Characters: Souji Seta (Yu Narukami), Yosuke Hanamura, Naoto Shirogane, Investigation Team, Izanagi/Shadow!Souji Warnings: depression, dysphoria, disassociation, self-hatred, implied suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, mentions of homophobia, implied past child abuse and transphobia, canon-typical violence, mild sexual content Status: multi-chapter, incomplete

Playlist: Spotify | Youtube <- previous chapter | next chapter ->

The light has changed from dingy blue-grey to anxious pink by the time he realigns himself, creeping along the wall to spill down across the floor. There is a twisting sensation low in his stomach, a burning in the back of this throat. He runs his leaden tongue across his gums and they tingle in response. The ache is still there in every limb, echoed by a shaky feeling that makes his world feel like it’s slipping in and out of solidity.

He flips open his phone with his thumb. 7:19am the screen now reads, as well as a flashing notice from half an hour ago, proclaiming, 1 new message.

Shirogane-kun: SENPAI PLS CALL ME

Chapter 2: Been a Long Damn Day

“From the beach to the city, I been putting on a face. You’re no stranger to a mask, you ain’t lost or amazed. I been lost in a maze, been a long damn day, I been lost in a maze, been a long damn day…”

- (“Sinking”, Jeremy Zucker)

Shirogane-kun: SOUJI-SENPAI WHERE R U?

Shirogane-kun: R U OK?

Shirogane-kun: PLS RESPOND

Shirogane-kun: SENPAI PLS I AM WORRIED

4 missed calls from Shirogane-kun

Aibo: bro u ok? wtf happened?

Aibo: no srsly wth? what was that?

Aibo: prtnr we cant find u where did u go?

Aibo: shit the girls pageant is starting we cant leave

Aibo: not funny bro

Aibo: call me back man cmon ur freakin me out

Aibo: souji?

7 missed calls from Aibo

14 new messages, 9 missed calls from Kanji-kun, ~*Rise!*~, Amagi Yukiko, Satanaka Chie, TEDDIE

Souji stares down at the phone in his hand, squinting against the brightness of the screen in the pre-dawn gloom. 5:42am, it reads. Fantastic.

He shifts his weight to lean more against the side of the couch rather than the chilly wall and groans involuntarily when his entire body protests. He’s stiff, cold, and his everything is angry with him for sleeping on the floor. His uniform pants are still on from yesterday, though he has no idea just where his shirt and jacket went – or the flesh-colored bit of fabric that he wears underneath. At some point after running home in a blind, dissociative panic he knows he must have pulled them off because he remembers being shirtless before properly passing out, so, theoretically, they must be in the room with him somewhere. He doesn’t have the energy to look.

As long as his pants are still on.

As exhausted as he is, (mentally, physically, emotionally,) he knows he won’t be able to get back to sleep at this rate. He can’t work up the energy to pull out the futon or change into real pajamas, and besides, he’d just have to get right back up for school again soon after. His body aches too much to let him relax anyway.

So Souji sits there, folded over on himself in the corner between the couch and wall, and doesn’t read the slew of missed texts from his worried friends. He can’t; their escalating concern leaves a guilty stone in his stomach on top of the embarrassment he already feels. He knows they’ll be upset with him for not telling them where he is, that he’s okay, and it spikes his anxiety just thinking about it – which just makes it all the more impossible to open the rest of the texts. He’d barely made it through Naoto’s, forced himself to read Yosuke’s, before he’d had to quit.

Something else, though, is the quiet, creeping dread that has nestled into his already-anxious heart. He can’t read the rest, can’t bring himself to respond and ease their worry because he doesn’t know what to say. How can he possibly explain to his friends why he bolted like a frightened cat for seemingly no reason? They’d want to know what set him off, why it had caused such a violent reaction, and every reason Souji can think of just leads his brain deeper and deeper down the winding rabbit hole of Things He Doesn’t Want to Talk About.

How is he supposed to tell them what brought about his soul-shattering panic attack without revealing everything else?

Still. If he stays silent for too much longer then he’ll lose the window of opportunity to try and play this whole thing off as something they shouldn’t worry about. He also potentially runs the risk of one of them reporting him missing, or even just straight up going to his uncle. There is no easy way to go about handling this garbage fire of a situation and trying to think of ways to avoid it is only making everything so much worse inside his head.

Souji lolls his head back and watches the encroaching dawn slither through his windows and play across the wall across from him. It’s the only light in the room aside from his phone. Eventually, that, too, goes dark.

He flips open his phone with his thumb. 7:19am the screen now reads, as well as a flashing notice from half an hour ago, proclaiming, 1 new message.

Shirogane-kun: SENPAI PLS CALL ME

He… wants to. Out of all his friends, Naoto would be the safest one to talk to right now. They know, and he wouldn’t have to think up some excuse as to why he fled from school the way he did. It would be… refreshing, he thinks, to finally be honest about a situation like this. (He also shamefully knows that of everyone he still owes an explanation to, he may have frightened Naoto the most. After all they’ve done for him the past two days, he owes them at least this much.)

His thumb only hesitates over the call button for a moment – just one – before he shakily presses it down. The line picks up on the second ring.

“Senpai! Oh thank god; are you alright? Where are you?’

Souji winces at the desperation in his friend’s voice. “I’m fi—“ He swallows against the dryness in this throat, hesitant to say “fine,” because he really, probably isn’t. He hasn’t been fine for days. “I’m alive,” he finally settles on. “I woke up at home but I don’t remember getting here.” There’s no point in lying, and it feels good – if only a little – to admit even the tiniest bit of weakness to someone he knows won’t use it against him.

There is a pause on the other end of the line. “You… ‘woke up’,” Naoto slowly repeats. “How long have you been there?”

“I don’t know. The whole time, I think.”

Naoto sighs and it sounds like a rush of tension being released. “Alright. Alright, it’s worrying that you do not remember, but at least you’re safe.”

There is another pause, a longer one this time, that Souji doesn’t know how to fill. When Naoto finally speaks again, their voice is tiny, quiet, sounding so very young and sad that it damn near wrenches Souji apart.

“…Senpai, you scared me. I knew something must have happened but...”

There’s no one there to see it in the dark, but Souji instinctively hangs his head, shame and guilt lashing at his chest. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Something that sounds suspiciously like a sniffle comes over the line before Naoto vehemently says, “Don’t apologize. I know what panic can do to the mind, and I suspect you were not in complete control at the time. I just wish I could have helped.”

“You’ve already done more than enough,” he says, because it’s true.

Naoto doesn’t seem to agree. “What I have done is paltry compared to what needed to be done. I try not to make deductions about the Team anymore, but I imagine you require a great deal more support right now than a pack of makeup wipes.”

He doesn’t respond to that. He doesn’t exactly know how he can.

Naoto sighs again, this time sounding more frustrated than relieved. “I… That was invasive of me, I apologize.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, but your patience with me is appreciated anyway.”

They go quiet for a bit, and Souji can hear faint noises in the background – rustling cloth, the creak of leather. He is reminded that it’s early-o-clock on a school day and that Naoto is probably in the middle of getting ready to leave.

“Souji-senpai?” they finally say, soft and cautious. If Souji were to have any other siblings beyond Nanako, he thinks maybe he wouldn’t mind having Naoto as family.

“I’m still here,” he answers, and it feels like a drop of warmth. He thinks he might smile if he wasn’t so drained still.

“Do you… need to talk about it? Whatever it was that happened, I mean.”

He thinks. Yes, in a way he does, if only to let Naoto in the way they deserve to be. It would be nice to get it off his chest, to have someone understand, but at the same time he doesn’t think he can. Telling Naoto – while safe – would also mean reliving the gut-dropping horror of Teddie’s words. Souji has just barely gotten purchase in the real word again, shaky as it is, and he’d rather not have that tentative stability taken away again. So he takes a breath and lets it out slowly through his nose.

“I… probably,” he says, “but I’d rather not think about it anymore.”

Naoto hums. “I understand. Sometimes it’s better that way.”

There is more shuffling. Then, “I’m terrible at this, aren’t I?”

Souji huffs – a quiet laugh that isn’t exactly a laugh but is closer than he usually gets. “I don’t think so,” he assures them. “You’re trying; that’s more than I’m used to.”

He thinks he probably shouldn’t have said that. He can’t bring himself to dwell on it right now.

A low, displeased sound comes through the earpiece, and Souji can vividly picture the stern furrow of Naoto’s brows, their lips pressed into a thin, stony line. Yeah. He really shouldn’t have said that.

Thankfully they seem to let it go (though he’s pretty sure Naoto never lets anything go and is just filing it away for later,) because the next words he hears from them are, “Did you sleep at all?”

“Uhm. A little. I think so, at least.” It certainly wasn’t long or well, but he isn’t going to mention that.

Another low, wordless sound. “Have you eaten?”

Oh.

He thinks back to the way his stomach had purged itself the day before last, how he’d been too dead inside to eat breakfast or even pack lunch yesterday. No wonder his body feels weak and shaky, his skull tight behind his eyes.

He swallows. “I… no. Not since… no.”

“Senpai.”

“I think… I might need to stay home today,” he whispers sheepishly. He feels like a child facing down the disapproving stare of an older sibling – which throws him a little since Naoto is younger than he is. He can’t tell if it’s comforting or just plain unsettling. Maybe a little bit of both.

“Do you want me to tell the others you have food poisoning?”

He startles. “That…” He clears his throat to try and regain himself. He’s surprised by how easily Naoto is able to handle this, how quickly they volunteer to cover for him. He hates that he’s surprised. He thinks Naoto would hate that he’s surprised as well.

“You’d do that?” he whispers, unable to hide the slight tremble of grateful awe.

Naoto’s voice is kind, gentle like warm water on an aching body when they say, “I’ll tell them whatever you need me to, Senpai, and nothing else.”

Souji makes a sound that he’s pretty sure is wet and mildly hysterical. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Senpai. I mean that truly.”

He lets out a long, slow breath, careful not to do so directly into the phone, and lets the feeling of something safe and grateful and happy wash over him; like a place to rest when exhaustion peaks, or the warmth of a fire chasing away cold misery. Or, he thinks with a tiny smile, the glowing, sparkling, champagne-fizzy feeling that a bond sends zinging through his veins whenever its rank has risen.

Comfortable quiet reigns as the rank up run its course.

All too soon though, reality returns and through the phone speaker there comes a clock chime from somewhere in the background. Naoto makes a muffled sound as they apparently take their phone away from their ear for a moment.

“Do I need to let you go?” Souji asks when it seems like Naoto can hear him again.

They sigh. “Possibly. Will you be alright?”

He pauses. Aside from how shitty he feels due to lack of proper sleep and no food for two days, he feels… lighter. The anxiety from before has calmed somewhat now that he no longer has to drag his protesting body to school and face down his friends. “Yeah,” he says, and it’s nice to find that he means it. “I’ll be alright. I’ll…” he huffs – the faintest hint of a chuckle, “…spend the day recovering, probably.”

Naoto hums again. “Good, do that.” A beat of silence. Then, “Thank you for calling me, Senpai. If you hadn’t I was planning on coming by your house after school.” They make an odd noise that Souji thinks might be an audible expression of discomfort. “I would have done so yesterday, to be honest, had Kashiwagi-sensei not hauled us all off to change for the beauty pageant.”

Oh hell. He’d forgotten about the second pageant. He winces as he realizes just how awful it must have been for his friends – Naoto especially. “I am so sorry,” he says, his voice a rush of breath. “I shouldn’t have run out on you like that; after everything you did for me, I should have stayed to support you—“

But Naoto cuts him off. “Senpai, it’s alright. Panic and the mind, remember? Don’t apologize.” They make the noise of discomfort again, and Souji thinks he can almost hear the way Naoto’s face scrunches up when they deeply dislike something. “Obviously I survived, though it was… unpleasant,” they say, tone flat and unamused. “I won.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yes, I would like very much for that to never happen again to either of us.”

There is a muffled voice on Naoto’s end of the line and Souji hears what might be a hand covering the receiver. Naoto says something in return, though Souji doesn’t catch it. A few seconds pass before Naoto returns. “I’m afraid I have to leave now, Senpai. Would it be alright for me to text you during lunch to check on you?”

Souji feels the edges of his mouth stretching upwards, just slightly. He can’t remember if he’s ever smiled as much as he has in recent months. “If you want to,” he replies. “I’ll be okay, though; I just need to eat something.”

“Please do.” A sigh. “Take care, Senpai.”

“You, too.”

Naoto makes one last short noise of affirmation before the line disconnects and Souji is left to stare down at the call’s time stamp on his dimly glowing screen. 7:38. He’ll be late if he wants to try and make it to school.

He isn’t going to.

Looking up at the room around him he is surprised to find the morning light has started to fill it properly – more gold now than blue or pink. It’s brighter than yesterday, when it was a pale, sickly yellow reflecting the way his body felt like lead and his head like poison. He stretches his arms upwards, grunting as several things pop. Maybe today will be better, he thinks; maybe his mind got its fill of blackness over the past 48 hours and will leave him alone today.

Deciding that a good place to start would be finally acknowledging how empty his stomach is, Souji pulls himself to his feet and braces himself against the back of the couch as the waves of dizziness roll over him. He lets them pass, then pushes off the couch, shaky and weak. He’s glad it sounds like no one else is home – he’d hate to try and explain why he was hugging the wall on his way down the stairs. He steels himself, plants his weight on the balls of his feet as best he can, and slowly starts to make his way down towards the kitchen.

He only pauses once for breath at the bottom of the stairs, taking the opportunity to change his newest friend’s name in his phone from “Shirogane-kun” to “Naoto”.

He feels along the bond of the Wheel of Fortune arcana and smiles at the newfound strength glowing back at him.

---

Souji expects school the next day to be an awkward affair, and to some degree it is. Thankfully no one outside the IT seemed to really notice his terrified escape two days prior; or, at least, no one outside his friend group says anything. He does, however, catch a few whispers floating around as he passes certain groups of people – whispers that sound suspiciously like they’re about the cross dressing pageant and how “good” he looked on stage, usually from tight clusters of giggling girls or between the odd pair of jittery-looking guys. He does his best not to listen.

The real unease, though, sets in when he slips into his seat in the classroom and Yukiko, Chie, and Yosuke – who is here early for once – all turn to look at him. He tries to give them a reassuring smile but it feels just as forced as it actually is. Yosuke especially seems unconvinced.

Luckily the teacher walks in just as Souji feels the back of his head starting to smoke from how intensely Yosuke is staring, so he’s spared having to face his partner just yet.

Unluckily, this just means that by the time lunch rolls around, Yosuke wastes no time in poking Souji’s shoulder to get him to turn around. Slowly, Souji does so, and fixes his best friend with a shaky half-smile. He’s so tired of his nerves running at full capacity.

“Hey,” he says, a little less steady than he’d like.

Yosuke raises a brow at him. “Hey, yourself. What the hell, man? Why didn’t you text me back?”

Besides them, Yukiko nods in agreement and Chie opens her mouth to join the conversation.

Souji doesn’t wait for her to speak. “Did Naoto tell you what happened?” It’s partially a stalling tactic – something he hates being so good at anymore – and partially to see what they think went down so that he can build a believable story off it. Naoto had messaged him during lunch the day before, as they said they would, and given him a rundown of the excuse they had spun for him, but he doesn’t want to just play off that. Yosuke is too observant for his own good sometimes, and his ego is fragile enough that Souji knows he’ll need to be extra careful when trying to lie his way around his best friend’s suspicion.

It’s Yukiko that answers. “Naoto-kun said you went home because you weren’t feeling well, and that was why you weren’t at school yesterday.” She tilts her head, dark eyes narrowing in concern. “But you disappeared so suddenly! You seemed fine before.”

“Yeah,” Chie exclaims, nodding vigorously. “One minute you were in the classroom with us and the next you were just gone!”

“And tearing down the hallway like the building was on fire. Seriously, bro, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you move that fast.” A flicker of worry passes over Yosuke’s face before it settles back into the oddly pinched look he’s been wearing. He stares at Souji with creased brows and a downturned mouth. “And apparently you just left? You didn’t even stay to see the girls! I woulda thought you’d at least wanna cleanse your eyes after seeing Kanji in a dress.”

Souji feels his face turn stony. When Chie makes a noise of offence and smacks Yosuke in the back of the head, Souji makes no move to intercept.

Instead, he chooses to look at Yukiko when he speaks, as though he’s answering questions in turn. “I was fine for a while.” He has enough to work with, he thinks. Maybe. Naoto has laid the groundwork for him to (hopefully) weasel his way out of this without too many roadblocks. He chooses a middle path between lying (he doesn’t like lying to friends now that he has them) and the truth (because no, no, not in a million years, no) and works the half-truths through a set of carefully constructed loopholes. He’s become far too good at loopholes.

He tugs at his own expression until it resembles something sheepish. His nerves help it look more real. “I made the mistake of not eating anything yesterday because I was nervous.” (Not a lie.) “Naoto actually found me in the bathroom… throwing up stomach acid.” (Also not a lie, as long as he doesn’t tell them when Naoto found him in the bathroom.) He looks away and rubs at a spot just behind his ear. He’s aware that it makes him look embarrassed – which is fine – but it also gives him an excuse not to keep eye contact.

Chie and Yukiko both make sounds of distress, talking at him and over each other in their concern and he thinks he may have managed to fool them. He glances at Yosuke and, yeah, no, that’s not convincement looking back at him.

“So you bolted cuz you had to go throw up?” Yosuke asks, his voice thinly tinted with disbelief.

Lay it thicker, maybe I can shock him into buying it.

Souji nods. “I’m sorry I worried you,” he says to all of them, but directly at Yosuke to make sure his partner feels special here. He stifles a grimace at how manipulative he has to be – how much of a coward he knows he’s being. He hates this. “I screwed up and made myself sick. By the time I got home I was in such bad shape that all I could do was lay down and pass out. I didn’t even wake up until yesterday morning.”

Again, it’s not technically a lie, even if he more disassociated than “passed out,” and he doesn’t actually remember anything from his panic attack. He’s aware that when the story gets around to the kohai, Rise will likely blame herself for insisting he participate in the pageant. A tiny peek over at Yukiko and Chie’s faces tells him that they’re feeling a little guilty, too. He hates this. He hates it.

And he especially hates the tiny little piece of him that whispers, “good.”

Trying to swallow the guilt in his own gut, Souji places his hands on his knees and bows low in his seat. It’s the last card he can play without despising himself entirely, and the final touch to what he hopes is a believable enough story.

Chie says something to him that Souji only barely listens to, while Yukiko puts a hand to her mouth and gives him a look like a sad puppy as he slowly sits up. Yosuke, however, seems unsure. His mouth is open slightly like he wants to say something, and he looks torn between worry and confusion.

Deflect. Distract.

Souji puts on a self-depreciating smile. “I’m really sorry, Partner,” (because he knows Yosuke is weak to the nickname), “I left right after Naoto found me. I would have said something but I was afraid I’d have to answer to Kashiwagi if she caught me trying to leave.” He twists his face into something that might be a non-verbal “yikes.”

And that’s what does the trick.

Yosuke’s expression switches to a more exaggerated version of Souji’s own. “Oh god. Smart thinking, man, she probably would’ve made you stay even if you’d throw up on her.” He shudders. “Her in a swimsuit is gonna haunt my nightmares forever.”

Souji actually balks at that. “Swimsuit?” has asks, genuinely aghast as he looks to Chie for confirmation. Oh. Well hell, now he feels even worse for leaving Naoto to their fate the other day.

Chie nods. “Yeah, we had to go up there in swimsuits and dresses and everything. It was humiliating.”

The way Souji’s face contorts in unbridled, empathetic discomfort is completely real and completely involuntary. “I am so sorry.”

Yukiko looks at him, puzzled. “Why? You didn’t sign us up.” She and Chie both shoot Yosuke a look that could curdle blood.

“Oh come on!” Yosuke sputters in response. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

Something tightens in Souji’s chest and, not for the first time, he wishes he had the courage to shut Yosuke’s bullshit down. But he doesn’t, so he doesn’t, and the trickle of self hate from earlier drips just a little bit faster.

Souji bites down hard on the inside of his cheek.

“At least everything you wore was meant for girls,” Yosuke is saying, holding his hands up as though trying to placate a snarling dog. It seems to be going about as well as expected.

He turns his head to shoot Souji a look that says ‘back me up’ but Souji simply raises an eyebrow at him. He might not be brave enough to tell his best friend off for being a prick, but he also has no desire to get pulled into the hole Yosuke is digging right now.

Yosuke seems to understand that Souji isn’t going to help him, because his face is distinctly paler when he turns back to the girls and says, “You wanna talk humiliating, us guys had it so much worse in drag!”

Wrong move.

Yosuke lets out a squawk as the girls rightfully begin to tear into him like feral cats; Chie with her fist and Yukiko with words like daggers. Souji lets it happen.

Silently, he digs out his bento and tries very hard not to be bitter. About the way Yosuke’s words leave a weird hot-stinging sensation in Souji’s chest, about how no one seems inclined to apologize for signing him up for the pageant; just… everything.

He squashes the thoughts back down before they can affect his outward expression. It’s fine, it’s okay, everything is okay; he doesn’t feel childishly irritated over the whole damn situation. He just wants the subject dropped.

“I should go apologize to the others,” he says as he stands. No one seems to really hear him, but Yukiko does spare him a nod as he passes. Chie is too busy digging her knuckles into Yosuke’s scalp to notice him leaving.

He heads out the door, bento in hand, and starts in the direction of the stairwell. He really does plan on apologizing to Kanji and Rise at some point today – and Teddie, too, of course, though Souji stills feels shaky at the thought of talking to him just yet – but for now he really just wants to find Naoto. He hopes they like onigiri; out of all his friends, Naoto is the only one he hasn’t yet had a chance to make lunch for, and food will be a good way to start thanking them properly now that the chaos has mostly died down.

It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with Souji finding his own appetite gone for the third time in several days.

---

Lunch with Naoto is a welcome break from the tension of his own classroom. He tries to apologize in person – because it’s more polite than over the phone – but Naoto doesn’t let him. Instead, they wave away his attempt with a light flush on their face and pull down their cap to hide it. It doesn’t quite work. Still, the air between the two of them is surprisingly easy to breathe and Souji feels the last of the jitters drain from his limbs.

They talk a bit. It isn’t for very long, since Souji had spent the first third of the lunch period spinning his not-story for Chie, Yukiko, and Yosuke, but the conversation is easier than he’s used to and he realizes with a kind of happy warmth that it’s because he isn’t having to hide. He doesn’t need to keep his voice in check, keep it purposefully low and quiet, so he’s actually able to talk a little more than he usually does and not worry what will happen if he lets his vocal chords do as they want. He’s practiced for years at this point, anyway, so the danger is minimal, but sometimes, sometimes his throat starts to hurt when he tries for a tone just the wrong side of comfortable.

He’s even managed to regain some of his appetite by the time the end of lunch rolls around and together, he and Naoto make a decent-sized dent in the humble bento. (It turns out that, yes, Naoto does in fact like onigiri, and that the seasoned rice with tuna is their unexpected favorite.) Naoto thanks him but he turns the tables and waves their thanks away in a similar fashion to what they’d done with his apology. They part with plans to spend lunch together again before the week is over and Souji finds he’s wearing the same small, genuine smile that only seems to come out because of Naoto.

He’s almost late getting back because he actually runs into Rise on the way to his classroom and takes the opportunity to apologize to her, too. She does start to blame herself, just like he thought she might, but a well placed smile that he knows makes her blush and a few words of reassurance have her giving him a watery smile in return. He makes it back just in the nick of time with one more friendship smoothed over.

The second half of the day is… interesting. Things seem to have gone back to relatively normal between him and Yukiko and Chie. Chie asks him how it went right before the teacher walks in and Souji flashes her a quick thumbs up. She grins.

No, everything is fine with the girls; it’s Yosuke that appears to still have issues. On any other day his best friend would be poking him in the back with the top of a pencil, tapping him in the side with a note he was passing, whispering snarky commentary about something one of their teachers says, but today…

Souji wants to ask just how badly Chie knuckled him, but he thinks that may be the least of the reasons why Yosuke isn’t interacting like he normally does. A lump forms in Souji throat that refuses to go away no matter how many times he tries to swallow it down.

It takes forever but the final bell eventually rings and, nervous as he is about, well, everything anymore, Souji slides around in his seat to give his partner a smile. He tries to make it as real as he can, calling on all the good things he feels about Yosuke and tucking his earlier frustrations away for the time being. As much of an ass as Yosuke can be, he’s still Souji’s best friend, and Souji would very much like that dynamic back now, if possible. He misses normal.

Just as he opens his mouth to ask if Yosuke wants to walk home together, the other boy stands and slings his bag over his shoulder. Yosuke hurries out of the room, only pausing briefly to turn around and walk backwards while flashing Souji a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I gotta get ready for work, I’ll see ya later, Partner!” And then he’s dashing out the door with one last, “I’m glad you’re better, dude!”

It hurts a bit, like a bruise he accidentally smacked that now throbs a dull rhythm. But, he supposes he might deserve it after the scare he gave everybody, and it wouldn’t surprise him if Yosuke were still upset about Souji not letting him know he was alright. He also can’t actually say his partner doesn’t have an after-school shift, so in the end Souji resigns himself to that little spark of pain and vows to text Yosuke later before he goes to bed. Maybe he’ll bring another lunch to share tomorrow. Just to be safe.

He stays and talks to Yukiko and Chie for a few minutes before Yukiko remembers that she has to go help set up for a large business dinner being held at the inn that night. Chie offers to walk with her and Souji bids them both farewell.

The biggest surprise of the day, however, is finding Kanji waiting by his shoe locker, looking more than a little trepidatious.

At first Souji thinks it’s about his disappearing act the other day; after all, Kanji is the only schoolmate he still owes an apology to. (Teddie is, again, a different matter altogether.) So Souji puts on the appropriate facial expression and readies himself to repeat the story one more time.

“Kanji, hi,” he says, nodding when his friend looks up at his approach.

Kanji stands up straighter from where he’s been leaning against he side of the lockers, but he keeps his arms across his chest like a shield. “H-hey, Senpai.” He looks away and doesn’t say anything more.

Taking that as his cue to start, Souji politely tilts his head and puts on the familiar sheepish expression. “I should apologize—“

“You busy right now?”

Souji blinks stupidly. He closes his mouth with a quiet ‘click’ and takes a second to recover from being cut off and thrown wildly off-balance.

Kanji flushes. “Sorry, Senpai, I just…” He clears his throat and looks back up, shoulders squaring. “I gotta talk to somebody about somethin’ and you’re kinda the only person I trust with it.”

Souji’s eyes go impossibly wider. He feels his brows somewhere up near his hairline and absently wonders where his perfect control over his own face went. “I…” he starts, still not entirely reoriented. He quickly switches gears and tries to tuck the confusion away to make room for Friend Mode. “O…kay?”

Well. It’s something. He clears his throat and stars again, the smallest of frowns creeping along his mouth. “Is everything alright? You know I’ll help in any way I can.”

Kanji gives him nothing but a stiff nod and poorly concealed nerves.

Souji keeps a tight leash on his expression. “Okay, well, let me get my shoes and we can walk together?” he tries. He not sure if he should be anxious or not but whatever Kanji needs him for, Souji knows that he’ll at least feel more at ease somewhere further away from school.

“Oh!” Kanji startles a little and steps far enough back that Souji can get to his locker. “Right. Sorry.”

Five minutes later sees them passing through the school gates, side by side in silence.

Without a clear destination, Souji simply steers them towards the floodplain. If the little seating area is free then that’s where he plans to take them; it’s a familiar enough place that he feels comfortable talking there, but also has plenty of open air so he can make a hasty – but polite – escape should he need to. He doesn’t like that his first reactions to half his friends these days have been self-debates on whether or not he can outrun them.

Kanji keeps fidgeting as they walk, like his fingers are tracing out knitting patterns to keep his mind busy. Souji doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Kanji so jittery when Naoto wasn’t nearby for his friend to sweat over. Their mutual crush is adorable in how obvious it is to everyone but them and Souji hopes one of them will make a move some day. They would make a good couple.

Matchmaking aside, Souji wonders if maybe he should try his apology once more – if only to break the cacophonous silence. He’s had more than enough silence from his own parents, thanks; he doesn’t like it from his friends.

The thought cuts a deep path through Souji’s chest and he grinds his teeth against it, though the pain is an old one and he’s long since grown accustomed to it. It’s been a while since his mind has turned to that particular dark corner.

(He tramples another thought before it can fully form – one that seems hell-bent on comparing certain old hurts with the newer ache of Yosuke apparently avoiding him.)

“I owe you an apology,” he says suddenly, his voice a bit too loud in his own ears. He turns his head to catch Kanji twitching like he’s been startled before looking over at Souji in confusion.

“Huh? What for?”

Souji keeps his features carefully schooled. “For what happened after the pageant. Running off and not telling anyone where I went.” He tilts his head and does not frown. “Freaking everyone out?”

“Oh, that.” Kanji rubs at the back of his neck. “I appreciate it, but you don’t gotta apologize to me, Senpai. Naoto and Rise both already filled me in.” He pauses to give Souji a long, appraising look. “How’re ya feelin’, by the way?”

That catches Souji off guard. It seems Kanji is just exceptionally good at that today. “I’m alright,” he says honestly. Once more, he avoids the word “fine” because that, to him, would imply more than just physical alright-ness and he just… doesn’t want to think about that anymore.

Kanji seems satisfied with his answer and turns back to watching the world in front of them. “Can’t say I wasn’t worried, ‘specially after seeing you bookin’ it down the hallway like that, but I figured you’d let someone know eventually.” He shrugs. “And if you didn’t me an’ Naoto were gonna go check out your house after school today.”

Souji actually chuckles at that, breath stuttering past his lips to form the sound. “So they told me.” He lets one corner of his mouth tug upward as he catches Kanji’s eye again. “Thank you. And I am sorry.”

Kanji flushes and looks away. “Nah, ‘s nothing.”

The rest of the walk is significantly less tense after that.

Subsequently, it’s also shorter than it had seemed a few minutes ago. They arrive not long after and Souji takes it upon himself to sit down and fold his hands over the tabletop, leaving Kanji to lean his hip against the opposite corner.

Well, here goes.

“Alright,” he says, taking a deep breath to steady himself. “What can I do to help?”

Kanji snorts, but it’s neither derogatory nor mirthful. He doesn’t look at Souji as he crosses his arms back over his chest. “Ain’t really somethin’ I need help with so much as I just need to... get it off my chest, ya know?” He frees one hand and makes a sharp, vague gesture near where his heart is. “I can’t keep it in anymore; I gotta tell somebody or I’m gonna go crazy and… well, I figured you’re the safest bet...”

Souji’s expression melts into something soft, warm, amiable. “Well thank you,” he says, genuinely a little touched, only for Kanji’s entire face to go cinnamon-red.

Kanji makes a noise of frustration, scrubbing furiously at his hair to hide his burning cheeks before just giving up and turning so that Souji is now staring at his back. “Damnit, that wasn’t—! UG.” He takes a moment to gather himself; Souji gives it to him. Eventually Kanji lets out a heavy breath and straightens up once more. He makes no move to turn around.

“Look, Senpai, you… You’ve always accepted me, yeah? You never treated me like I was some kinda delinquent or, or whatever Yosuke-senpai fuckin’ thinks I am—“

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Souji says, low and dark and steely. He feels the bitterness and self-dislike bubbling up from their deep-seated pools. Kanji is a good person – rough around the edges, yes, but still just a kid like the rest of them and a genuinely kind one at that. Souji hates how afraid he’s been of jeopardizing Yosuke’s opinion of him, of how he’s been too much of a coward to stand up for his younger friend and make Yosuke apologize for his homophobia. A team is only as good as its leader and Souji must really be a poor leader if he can’t even stop his own lieutenant from being a jerk.

It’s not just that you’re afraid of losing him as a friend, his mind whispers. You’re afraid of him finding out.

Souji glues his tongue to the roof of his mouth and clamps down on the horrible way his chest constricts.

Luckily Kanji is still facing away from him. “Y-yeah,” he agrees, oblivious to his senpai’s internal self-disgust. “Yeah, you’re cool like that. An’ that’s why you’re kinda my best bud.”

Oh, now that just makes Souji feel even worse. He’d forgotten that Kanji had told him that once, back when Naoto had first officially joined the IT, and hearing it again now is like a fist to the spine. He’s failed Kanji, he really has, he—

“And I mean! I know you an’ Yosuke-senpai are ‘partners’ or whatever, but I just… I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is that I trust you, Senpai.” Kanji sighs, the line of tension in his shoulders giving way. He tucks his hands into his pants pockets and stares at something out over the grey-sapphire shimmer of the river below.

Souji swallows. “Kanji…”

He doesn’t know what to say. What can he say, besides another useless “sorry”?

But Kanji just shakes his head and leans his weight back on his heels. He looks up at the sky, or maybe just lolls his head back in resignation, like a man coming to terms with the thousand-foot-drop that awaits him.

Souji knows the feeling.

“I think,” he says – and it’s so quiet that Souji has to lean forward to try and hear him better. There is a pause as Kanji takes a deep, long breath and lets it out.

“I think I might be bi.”

Souji is floored. Of all the possible things that Kanji could have just said to him, Souji was very much NOT excepting that to be one of them. It comes so far out of left field that it actually shocks all of Souji’s dark and guilty thoughts into absolute silence.

The quiet rings out between them, stretching into an impossibly long handful of seconds. Souji needs to respond, he knows he needs to, can see the way Kanji’s shoulders have started to tighten and hunch, but for the first time in forever Souji’s mind is empty and he cannot remember how to form words with his tongue.

So he just blinks like an owl and breathes out a soft, “…Oh.” Because really, how else can he react?

Something about how he says it has Kanji tentatively turning halfway around to look at him. Kanji’s face is guarded, like he’s ready at any moment to throw up his bravado, his shields, and the vulnerability it exposes is enough to finally, finally snap Souji back into action.

A warm smile spreads over Souji’s features, hardly even bidden, and he leans back to sit more naturally upright. He lets the smile crinkle at the corners of his eyes. “Thank you for telling me, Kanji.” He keeps his voice light, calm, kind; he is completely honest when he glances away and says, “I know how hard it must have been to say it out loud.”

Kanji’s eyes widen in realization. “Senpai… You, too?”

Souji makes a sound somewhere between a cough and a wispy bark of laughter. It’s stifled, but his shoulders jerk with the veiled force of the noise and he matches Kanji’s gaze with a tired, understanding one of his own. “Not bi, no,” he says pointedly, cocking an eyebrow and hoping it’s visible beneath his hair.

Kanji lets out a shaky breath. “Oh,” he echoes. He slides down onto the bench across from Souji, almost like he’s a block of ice melting in the sudden sunlight. “So you’re…?”

“Yeah.”

They sit in companionable silence for a minute, each processing the conversation so far.

After a few beats, Souji tilts his head curiously and asks, “What made you want to tell me?”

Oh, that…

Souji immediately dislikes how that sounded and his face twists minutely at the sour taste the words leave on his tongue. He hastily adds, “I’m honored that you did, don’t get me wrong, but—“

“Why’d I pick now?”

Souji sucks part of his lip between his teeth and nods.

Kanji sighs and leans back on the bench – which looks horribly uncomfortable, considering there’s nothing for his back to rest against. He re-crosses his arms and looks up at a passing cloud. “I started figuring it out a while ago and it’s been buggin’ me ever since. Like, it’s too big a secret to keep by myself, ya know?”

Souji does know. Oh god does he know.

He nods again, even though Kanji can’t see it properly while looking elsewhere. Kanji seems to catch it, though, because he keeps going.

“And after all that shit with my shadow, I just… I dunno. I’m sick of tryin’a hide from myself, so I thought, hey, this is a thing about me, might as well accept it.” He pauses and shifts awkwardly, clearly trying to consider his next words. His eyes flick over to Souji once or twice but he quickly averts them again right after.

Souji waits. He refuses to make this any more difficult for his friend than it already is.

He has a hard time keeping the surprise from his face, though, when Kanji mutters, “Weirdest part is, I knew but it didn’t really hit me until the stupid pageant.”

“The pageant?” Souji blurts. “How?!” Everything in his head scrambles a little, and there is a moment where he’s just gaping at Kanji like a fish with his mouth trying to form shapes and failing miserably.

He not sure how two people could have such wildly different reactions to that living nightmare of a day.

Kanji actually laughs at his outburst – a bit awkwardly, but still a laugh. “Yeah, the whole thing sucked ass, didn’t it?” He scratches at this cheek. “Kinda liked my dress, though…”

“It looked good on you,” Souji mumbles, still not fully recovered.

Kanji flushes and glances away. “Thanks, Senpai. You uh, you looked good, t—“ He trails off as he looks back over at Souji, eyes widening and brows furrowing.

Souji’s making a face; he knows he is, there’s no way he isn’t when there’s a layer of frost creeping its freezing fingers over his heart. He can feel the stretch of his lips over his teeth in a twisting grimace that’s well beyond his own control. Don’t think about it, please don’t think about it...

Kanji coughs into his fist. “Uh, I mean, you always look good, Senpai.” His expression does something funny, like he’s just realized what he’d said, and he apparently just gives up trying to salvage it. Instead, he props his elbows up on the table and drops his face into his hands. “Fuuuuuuuuck! See? That’s my problem! Naoto always looks good and you always look good, and I can’t catch a break!” He ‘thunks’ his forehead down onto the hard wooden tabletop. Souji hopes he hasn’t hurt himself.

Kanji’s voice is muffled when he says, “That ain’t a confession, I swear, I just think you’re handsome, same as everybody else does.”

Oh.

OH!

Souji’s expression does a 180 and he can feel himself beaming. He’d been scared; after what Teddie had said, Souji had been expecting Kanji to say something similar, to say his bisexual realization had come about because of Souji in costume. (He suppresses a shudder at that.) But no. Kanji had called him “handsome” instead, which meant – awkward friendly attraction aside – Kanji had found him attractive as a guy. Not because he’d been dressed as something he wasn’t, Kanji had seen him at face value: a guy in a costume.

If he wasn’t so certain that Naoto would pistol whip him, Souji thinks he could dive across the table towards Kanji right now and kiss him.

He reins it in and settles for chuckling instead. “I’m flattered.” And he really kind of is. His eyes are fond as he adds, “I’m proud of you, too.”

Kanji sits back up again and flashes Souji a sheepish – albeit heavily relieved – grin. “You’re somethin’ else, ya know that, Senpai?”

Souji just beams brighter and gives him a noncommittal shrug.

Kanji exhales, the remaining tension bleeding out into the dirt below their feet. “Damn. It feels good to let all that out.” He laughs again, the sound light and relaxed. “I was gonna tell my ma first, but I think she already knows.”

Souji nods. His mouth turns imperceptibly downward and he says, with just a touch of chill, “A good mother usually does.” He tightens his face against the way it wants to crumple, and if there is a new ball of bitter thorns in his stomach then he chooses to leave it be.

Kanji thankfully doesn’t notice the way Souji’s expression has turned plastic. “Yeah,” he agrees, “and she’s said stuff before about ‘bringing a girl or a boy over for dinner’. I thought she was talkin’ about friends at the time but now I’m not so sure.”

He matches Souji’s gaze right as Souji manages to school his face back into something more natural. “I’m real glad I told you first, though.”

Warmth settles in on top of the thorny clot of pain and soothes the worst of the jagged edges. It’s still there – has been for years – but it’s easier to manage than it was a minute ago. Souji huffs through his nose, his quiet little not-laugh, and looks down at the table. Maybe he’s being selfish, but it makes him feel special in a way he thinks might be just what he’s needed.

“Me, too,” he says, and relishes in the feeling of fizzing, giddy brightness as the Emperor arcana jumps up another rank.

---

Souji goes home in a better mood than he ever expected to be. He makes dinner, watches TV with Nanako, manages to get a head start on the schoolwork he’d missed the day before. The only damper on his happiness is the fact that, despite Souji texting him several times throughout the evening, Yosuke has yet to answer back.

The sting from that afternoon returns and Souji is left frowning at his phone screen as he lies on his futon before sleeping. It’s… fine, he tells himself. I deserve this for scaring him like that. I’m overreacting.

He sets the phone aside and turns over, determined not to let it get to him. He’s asleep in minutes – well before midnight – and so doesn’t notice when the sky starts to open and drizzle gentle rain over top the resting world.

He doesn’t even stir when the clock strikes twelve and his television crackles to white-static life, a faceless monochrome figure peering out into his room with lightning-colored eyes.

#fanfic #fanfiction #persona 4 #p4 #souji seta #yu narukami #trans souji seta #trans male character #yosuke hanamura #kanji tatsumi #naoto shirogane #investigation team #trans!au #scars on my sleeve #caught in the grey #tw past abuse #tw dysphoria #tw self hate

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franeridart · 7 years

Note

Can i ask what (& why) Mina dragon is protecting?

You mean in the pic I posted? That’s just Baku and Kiri haha they’re there more for scale than anything else, really

Anon said:What role do Denki and Sero have in your take on the fantasy AU?

Sero’s a simple normal non-magic herbs merchant and amateur healer, Kaminari’s a lightning mage and a swordsman! They both also stumbled their way into being bards of sort, more for fun than anything else really - they used to travel alone and then they travelled together, till they travelled into the dragons’ territory without even realizing. Somehow, they managed to not die and get on the prince’s good side enough to be allowed to freely roam and maybe stay if they so wished

(they so wished)

Anon said:Ahh are you okay? If everything’s bad and all, feel better soon 🌟

Ahhhh, you’re sweet ;u; thank you!!

Anon said:Hey, I just really wanted to thank you! I only found you a couple months ago but your art has really inspired me. I owe a lot to you on finding an art style that’s comfortable for me. Not to mention, everything you do with Bakugou and Kirishima is the damn cutest thing and I can only love them more~! So thank you for all your lovely work!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh man that makes me super happy to hear!!!!!!!! I’m really really glad my messy art could help you like that haha and thank you so much for the compliments too aaaahhhh!!!!

Anon said:If you ever get around to some more fusions, how about some of the teachers with some students like midnight-bakugou and aizawa-momo?

ngl I have about maybe forty asks in my inbox with fusions suggestions in them, and I’m just letting them pile up cause… that au hasn’t been fun lately, but I think it might be again in the future? Maybe? So I’m leaving those there and waiting for inspiration to strike again - that said, I’m sort of intrigued about these specific combos :O why Midnight and Bakugou specifically? The more I think about this the more I can’t tell if what’d come out would be something sexy or just utterly ridiculous lmao

Anon said:Just imagine Kiri and Baku getting married, and Fatgum is the one to give Kiri away and they couldn’t decide on a best man so there’s like 5 people giving speeches and there are Manly Tears shed.

What do you mean imagine, isn’t this exactly how it’s gonna go hahaha tho I can totally see Bakugou being 100% unaware of the best man situation, at some point after maybe the third speech he’s like is this done can we go now but nope there’s more people - Kirishima has a vague idea of it but as far as he knew it should have been only Denki and Hanta and Mina? Maybe? Most of the oragization of the wedding was left in Mina and Kaminari’s hands after all. But since everyone noticed that Bakugou’s already short patience is disappearing fast and since 1A is made of a bunch of assholes once Mina’s done Jirou’s like, okay my turn, and then it’s Deku, and then it’s Uraraka, and then Todoroki and Tokoyami and Hagakure and Tsuyu and Iida and Momo too why the hell not - Kirishima’s crying and laughing and Bakugou’s 1% touched and 99% ready to blow up, which, honestly, is exactly how a wedding between these two is supposed to end

Anon said:Hello.-wave- I know this isn’t a question but i love your art work and how you made Baku and his red haired boy friend (i forgot his name :( ) just bounce off each other so perfectly. Now I hope those two actually be a couple in the anime. :)

Ahhhhh I doubt they’ll actually become canon haha it’s a Jump shounen after all - but I’m glad you like the way I portray them!!!!! thank you so much!!

Anon said:TINY DRAGON BAKUGOU IS THE BEST AAAAAA (He’d be like the tiniest, bitchiest cat.)

HAPPY YOU LIKED HIM OMFG!!! and yes, yes that’s exactly how he is haha

Anon said:I wanna tell you how much I love you. Except… there are no words that can express just how much that is. I’ve tried writing to you off-anon before, but, I’m just too shy. (Even using anon, I’m really nervous.) Seeing your artwork always brightens my day. I enjoy reading your tags, comments, replies. I really appreciate your hard work and thank you for sharing it with us. I’m sorry for bothering you and you don’t have to reply. I hope you have a very lovely weekend!! ^^

You’re so sweet orz so damn sweet oh my god, thank you so much for every kind word ;O; I hope you’ll have the best week, anon!!!!

Anon said:Dragon Baku be lookin like a mango, I love him so much. Bless u Fran

A mango!!!!! Amazing, I was thinking about an explosion as far as colors go but a mango incredible I’m never unseeing that ever hahaha thank you, by the way!!! I’m glad you liked himmm!!!!!

Anon said:OOF SO ARE THEY BOTH DRAGON SHIFTERS??????

YES THEY ARE!!!!!

Anon said:How do you think Bakugou and Kirishima would react to finding out their kid was getting bullied in school? What would they say to them?

What a heavy question holy shit, I’m actually not sure? I’m not even sure a kid raised by Bakugou and Kirishima would ever let themselves be bullied, really, so the real question here is why is this kid being bullied? Based on what the answer to that is, they’d probably react in different ways. And what they’d tell the kid would change as well, of course. Well, either way they’d probably go raise hell inside the school, both of them

(then again we’re talking about Bakugou (a former bully himself) and Kirishima (a kid that used to physically fight bullies) and their kid, so maybe the actual conversation - in case the kid were ever to actually admit to it, cause Bakugou and Kirishima’s kid might not even ever do that - would probs go something like,kid: “what if there were someone at school I was having problems with?”baku: “kill them” kiri: “Katsuki! you don’t kill them, you talk to them, and if they try to touch you you punch them as hard as you can right on the chin just like we taught you”)

(When the next day they’re called in because their kid has made a classmate bleed Bakugou fist-bumps them and Kirishima put on his hero face and voice and tells the principal that next time if they don’t want their kid to defend themselves they should make it so that they didn’t need to in the first place)

Anon said:I started reading black clover because of that one sketch you did, and i had such a tough time stopping so I can get school work done 😅 in one day I’ve read 122 chapters and I didn’t want to stop

AHHHHH I’M SO HAPPY YOU LIKED IT!!!!!! It’s such a nice manga oh boy ;O;

Anon said:Imagine Bakugou seeing Kirishima being attacked or hurt by a villain. I imagine he would immediately explode and charge in to kill said villain? I’m not sure if you’ve seen it, but I also think of that scene in RWBY Volume 3 with Blake and Yang.

I haven’t watched it, sorry ;-; but yeah! Bakugou protecting Kirishima is something I’m waiting for the actual manga to deliver, so I try not to think too much about it to keep it fresh in case Horikoshi’ll ever be that nice to me haha but anyway we sort of saw how he reacted to Kiri being in mild “danger” during the license exam, so I guess for him to actually lose his mind and explode/get angry Kiri should be in serious danger. Like, post-Rappa fight type of danger, probably. Ahhhhhhhh boy, I seriously hope Hori will be kind enough to make something like that happen (………not that I want Kiri hurt, tho ;–;)

Anon said:Fran, Fran!!! New dgm chapter on the 16th October!!!!!!!!!!

I KNOW! And I won’t be here for it, can you believe ;~; I’m sad o

Anon said:what are your thoughts on trans kiri??

More or less the same as my thoughts on trans baku! I don’t share the headcanon myself, but there’s a lot of good art and works out there with that headcanon which I enjoyed a lot, and if that’s how you wanna see the character then go for it! Who’s even got the right to stop you hahaha

Anon said:Ooh, u read erasermic fics?? Got any faves??

Seems like I only got two in my bookmarks :O x x (and the second is an hp au haha) (I’m sure I read and loved more tho, I’ll have to come back on this when I have the time)

Anon said:Another thing about Invisible girl and Aizawa using his quirk on her. They used a tail as an example of erasing quirks and the tail was still there but it was like a dead limb. So if he used it on her she may actually be visible. I was thinking about this for awhile and I think it might work that way.

That might be! But then again, that still depends on why she’s invisible - if that’s just the way her skin is made then I don’t think Aizawa’s quirk would change anything? I dunno tho, it’s hard to headcanon about Tooru since we know so little about her!

Anon said:sorry I asked about eri-chan and I agree I really want her to be able to but what about her completely destroying her entire ability?? like not giving people their quirks back but make it so she can’t erase them anymore?? if you get me??

OH YEAH SORRY I TOTALLY MISREAD YOUR ASK OH MY GOD I’m not sure she can do that tho? Like, assuming destroying quirks is her quirk to begin with, I’d assume her body would be built in such a way that she’d be immune to it? It’s just the way I see it, tho :O

#fran answers #i actually wanna draw kami and sero for the au but #now i don't have the time #more than deciding to stay anyway they sort of ended up building a relationship with the rest of the squad #that made them feel like family?#both kami and sero didn't really have families or homes which is in part why they travelled #but baku and kiri and mina grew on them p fast so #they sorta feel like a family they wanna go back to #which means that more than deciding to stay they decided to /come back/ whenever they did leave #tho half the time they just travel with baku and kiri anyway #most times if they go mina follows too #sometimes they travel just the two of them and mina #when kiri and baku decide that they want to go do Too Dangerous Things and they're Not Up For That #sero and mina also share a passion for alchemy of sorts so they do that too #sero's more on the healing side and mina on the destroying one but they manage to meet halfway haha #anyway yeah they're there too #the squad isn't the squad without all of them #anonymous #bnha fantasy au

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thedeadflag · 7 years

Note

Hi I just want to thank you for being there yesterday I was having a bad time coping. Reading so many dismissive attitudes about things like the g!p issue knowing it boils down to most people as don't like it don't read it. Just bc its tagged doesn't mean it isn't doing harm. So many are supporting writers who know better but blatantly use it in a public forum makes me feel like i can't even be here sometimes. 1/2

2/2 I was thinking what if there was a popular genre that involved depicting/fetishizing black women with large breasts and small brains? What if that was a thing? Would ppl stay quiet bc its tagged? Wld ppl speak out? Thinking of all the things that ppl never speak up over but pretend to be allies? This performative allyship? It makes me sick. THIS is the toxic side of Tumblr. Thank you for being here.

It really is an issue of performative allyship vs actual allyship. Lots of people with “No TERFs” on their blog headers, folks asserting up and down that trans women are women and are “obviously” included in women’s spaces.

But then they fill those spaces with cissexism and transmisogyny and trans fetishization, and all sort of attitudes and behaviours and words that make it clear to us that we’re not truly accepted and seen as women, that we’re only welcome on their terms and that our voices don’t mean anything. So who are they supportive of? Who are they welcoming of within the spaces/communities we’re supposed to be able to safely exist in? It becomes intensely conditional. We’re accepted and welcomed so long as they get to demean us, misrepresent us, expose us to (and sometimes encourage) harm and sexual violence and social hostility, see and treat us like cis men in dresses they can put on a pedestal every once in a while for ally points.

If trans women are only conditionally accepted in women’s spaces, then our womanhood is being treated as conditional. It’s that simple. And it’s really clear that’s the case among those reading and writing those trans fetishistic works.

As for your example, I don’t need to use anyone else as a barometer for what’s acceptable in fandom, or how folks would react. Racial fetishization is distinct from trans fetishization.

But I do have a strong feeling that if Amber Riley had been thinner, if she’d fit the fetishized “thick girl” figure…I guarantee that we would have seen that sort of thing blow up in the Glee fandom. She was already treated as shrill, loud, and brainless/small-minded (misogynoir at play). Being fat disqualified her from being treated as a viable character for most sexual works (classic fatphobia), but yeah…if she’d been a “thick” girl with large breasts, yeah, absolutely people would have treated her character as a mindless sex receptacle. I’m not even sure anyone would be so kind as to tag their works with anything specific, outside of maybe the shudder-inducing “eb*ny”, since that seems to be the norm of how black women are treated in sexual media.

I doubt much of anyone aside from black women would speak out, or do anything about it. Hell, you’d probably get a bunch of folks who’d think it was positive rep. You’d get her paired up with all the white male leads in pursuit of pregnancy fics with mixed baby fetishization. And you’d get a slew of g!p fics in femslash portions of the fandom, with her as the ‘voluptuous’, ‘primal’, ‘aggressive’ partner with the BBC to ravage and fill up all the nubile, innocent white female leads. The fandom mostly shoehorned in Santana to fit that role, as the predatory mindless sex pot, but I don’t doubt that they’d have jumped on the possibility of using Mercedes if they’d seen her as viable. And fandom would have done nothing about it, because they didn’t do anything about it with Santana, dismissing criticisms left and right, and even trying to use canon material to justify twisting her character that way. Latinx fans were vocal as hell, and were roundly ignored and dismissed.

So yeah, in your given example, that’s exactly what would happen. Had racial fetishization been done in canon material, fandom would have maybe rallied a bit against that harmful rep (they did a few times in Glee to events.portrayals in canon, certainly), but when the finger’s pointed at them? Nope. Fandom, by and large, would not give even half of a shit. But they would be vocal here and there about being against racism, of how there needs to be more support for woc, especially in wlw fandom. Calling out #BlackLivesMatter while gleefully fetishizing black women is something I absolutely suspect would be common.

There’s a lot of issues in fandom. Trans fetishization is just one issue among a great many others. It’s the one I focus on, because it affects me directly, and I can speak on it and educate on it, but there’s absolutely racial fetishization in fandom. It’s rampant. And fandom spaces for LGBT+ fandom really do tend to mirror real life spaces. They’re white-centric and cis-centric for sure, to name a few pertinent issues.

And they don’t think they’re transmisogynistic. They don’t think they’re racist. Many of them can’t even get a sniff that there’s anything wrong with the works they love that fetishize and dehumanize real marginalized groups of people. And there’s all that toxicity right under the surface, and too many aren’t willing to do anything about it.

“It’d cause too much drama for my liking”

“I don’t want to rustle feathers”

“I don’t want to get anon hate”

“I don’t want to upset anyone.”

“I don’t want to lose any friends”

“I come to fandom to escape and have fun, not to argue”

Except for those of us being dehumanized and fetishized and excluded, we don’t have the luxury of dipping into fandom all peacefully and comfortably. We don’t have the ability to just ignore the harm being done to us and move on, nor should we have to.

Like, in real life, when folks see transphobia, or racism, and they do nothing? That can at times be understandable, if unfortunate. But online? There’s zero real risk/danger. There’s always, always ways to help. But people still shy away. When there’s practically an epidemic of people not commenting on fanworks, who’s going to put in the effort to fight these fights that isn’t already directly affected? Hardly anyone.

And I’ll admit there are times I could have done better, done more. I need to do better, there’s always room for improvement.

I just need to hope there’s enough out there trying to make things better for some sort of positive change to happen. It’s just hard sometimes, as you know.

I’m here if you need me.

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milfnipples · 7 years

Text

the bad part about wanting lgbt representation in overwatch is that there is almost always gonna be more cons than pros…. i’m not saying that as i am against the representation but when you have to depend on a company where their main demographic are straight men, it will never be handled correctly. either from the company or the fans.

for example:

when tracer was announced as being canonically in a relationship with emily, most straight men players (sadly the main demographic) who read the comic lost their shit. others who didnt read the comic had no idea that she was even dating emily because of lack of content in game. the ones who did read the comic either celebrated it, assumed she was bisexual so that men gamers still “had a chance” with a fictional woman, or hated that she was with emily.

most of the current characters have more cons than pros if they were to be announced as lgbt. either straight men gamers would be upset with the choices if the next character to be confirmed as lgbt was a man or they’d fetishize the character if they were a woman. or straight women would fetishize the lgbt men characters and alienate the women characters.

mei, mercy, widowmaker, d.va, sombra being lesbian, trans, or bisexual would either cause straight men to fetishize them or they would get upset because they don’t have the chance to project their toxic masculinity against these femme characters and try to “date” them. this would also cause the straight women “yaoi” communities to alienate these characters or treat them as an annoyance for getting in the middle of their gay ships. as for mei and d.va, they would get worse treatment because of straight men’s infantization of eastern asian women.

genji being gay, trans, or bisexual is extremely unlikely just because of the overwhelming amount of gency lines and lore in game. or cause an uproar from straight men gaming community.

mccree, reaper, solder: 76, or hanzo being lgbt would most likely cause an uproar from straight men gamers who hate mlm and/or think that those characters being gay, bisexual, or trans lowers the masculinity factor that most straight men gamers enjoy and love playing them for. the flip side is that because the four of these men characters are conventionally attractive, it would make the straight women who enjoy the game fetishize the men even more than they already do.

roadhog being gay, trans, or bisexual would cause the straight men gamers to treat him even worse than they already do because of his weight and age. they’d lose more respect for his character because of his orientation, gender, and appearance.

junkrat being gay, trans, or bisexual would give the same response as roadhog. the straight men playing the game would lose more respect than they had already because he is designed to be a comic relief character. not only does that cause an uproar, but its also just bad representation because of his implied mental issues and his comic relief position in the game’s lore.

lucio being gay, trans, or bisexual would cause more problems because already the community spews very racist jokes at the expense of lucio. it could only get worse if he was confirmed as a black lgbt man.

reinhardt or torbjorn being lgbt would most likely cause an uproar from straight men gamers think that those characters being gay, bisexual, or trans lowers the masculinity factor that most straight men gamers enjoy and love playing them for. it also would cause both characters to lose respect because of their age or appearances.

ana being lesbian, trans, or bisexual would cause straight men to either fetishize her or become angry and confused about her being pharah’s mother (lesbians or trans people can have biological children if they choose) it could also cause her to lose respect because of her being an lgbt egyptian woman.

pharah being lesbian, trans, or bisexual could cause straight men to fetishize her, or get upset because of no longer having a chance with her (she’s fictional?) it could also cause them to no longer play her because she would be an lgbt egyptian woman.

zarya being lesbian, trans, or bisexual is likely just because of her heavily butch woman coding but it would also cause straight men to alienate her more and lose more respect for her character than there is already.

symmetra being lesbian, trans, or bisexual would cause straight men to either fetishize her even more or alienate her because she is already confirmed as autistic in canon. they’d lose respect for her more than they already have because of her being an lgbt autistic indian woman.

bastion, orisa, or zenyatta being lgbt would cause more people to treat them as a joke because “robots shouldn’t have sexualities or genders.” (even though they are projected onto them anyway) it also is bad representation because it shows that blizzard is just kinda slapping them onto non-human characters which alienates the lgbt community from the gaming community

winston being gay, trans, or bisexual would cause more people to lose respect for his character because he is non-human which alienates the lgbt community from the gaming community. it would also lead to more furry jokes at his expense from the gaming community.

while i am not happy with the way blizzard has treated tracer’s sexuality in canon by not including any content in game or expanding on her and emily’s relationship, you can tell they chose tracer because of her strong butch woman coding.

the lgbt needs more representation in the gaming community and blizzard is trying but not enough and still cares more about profit from straight men gamers than true representation of lgbt gamers.

#syd talks #long post #overwatch #lgbt #ok to rb

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tsvitok · 7 years

Text

I’m pretty sad to learn that in the couple years I stepped away from Magic the Gathering, they’ve had two gay couples and a transgender woman. All of them badasses.

I wish I had been there so I could have ranted about how they’re only secondary characters and act like an ingrate for the small steps towards proper representation that a sphere of culture rife for half a century with misogyny and homophobia and founded upon the principles of male empowerment fantasies must take.

So to Wizards and Blizzards, considering you’re two monoliths of your particular industries, thanks for taking that first step. There were people before you leading the way, but it is important that you even try given the positions you both hold.

To the others out there, those who claim to represent and those who don’t even care to try - hurry the fuck up and get into the modern era.

And because I am an ingrate, here is a list of demands.

Blizzard

- admit the night elves are at least culturally defaulted towards bisexuality. They spent thousands of years gender segregated... ‘nuff said.

- the whole flirty attitude of the enchantress to my femwizard in Diablo 3 didn’t slip past me. They’d make a cute couple, two immensely powerful casters against the world.

- Kerrigan was way better as the queen bitch of the universe, why’d you have to ruin it? I mean, come the fuck on. Should have kept her ace, so at least do us all a favour and have Nathaniel Blightcaller fuck off in WoW. Sylvanas doesn’t need a partner in anything, you’ll only fuck her up like you did with Tyrande.

- You should have kept the Raynor-Fenix/Raynor-Tychus bromance alive Blizz. At least give us Dehaka and Abathur.

- Admit that Chromie is a biologically male dragon who transforms into a female gnome. We all know that’s the case, just embrace it.

- Finally, admit also to the fact that Heroes of the Storms Raven Lord and Grave Keeper are only fighting because they couldn’t agree on custody of the children (their citizens) after their messy divorce. The Raven Lord is incredibly catty.

Wizards.

- now, I’m not as well versed with Wizards lore, but what I understand Chandra and Liliana became fairly close fairly quickly. Plus they’re allied colours and Liliana is a known sexual manipulator. So next time you print a card with the two of them alone on it, if you’re going to have the art look like Liliana is suggesting they do something kinky, just call it “Inappropriate Time for Bedroom Talk.” and have the flavour text, “Chandra suggested to Liliana that now might not be the right time to suggest a three-way with Nissa.”

- if you ever canonise a poly relationship between three allied colours call it “the wedge”.

- if you ever go back to Tarkir or Innistrad, please reveal what happened to Alesha or Hal and Elana. You kind of left their whole stories open ended and I think a lot of people would appreciate some closure. What you did with the Guardians of Meletis (sp?) was cool.

Everyone Else.

- Riot, you said you’ll have LGBT representation - well, come on. Don’t let us down Greg Street you queerbaiter. Just because it took your old company twenty-five years to admit to a gay person’s existence doesn’t mean your new one can.

- Bioware, shut the fuck up about being representative unless you actually accomplish that. Trans-species same-sex relationships are like the hot alien women from Star Trek’s era - a way to get around actually depicting something by othering. I demand Cora become bisexual (I mean I’m still going to write her riding Ryder when I’m not busy) but some official support for gay males and non-alien exclusive females would be super.

- Activision, you just... change everything.

- Bethesda, you keep doing you. Apart from your buggy piece of shit games and subpar storylines, you’re going alright.

- Valve, canon Windranger and Drow Ranger - you’ll piss off every Dota2 player there is and you’ll get that sweet self-cest shipping. Because in case you aren’t versed in the game you bought from a guy that ripped off some other guys mod, Windranger and Drow Ranger were both just different models of Sylvanas Windrunner.

- those guys who write Adventure Time now - Steven Universe has multiple gay characters... what are you chickens? Fuck Iran and the Philippines they don’t deserve your show anyway. In fact, I’m not sure Iran will remain a sovereign nation much longer given how America is conducting its geopolitics.

- guys working on Stardew Valley, can you please hurry up with that Switch release so I can subject my sister to the horrible grindfest that is your charming little game. Also, next game you make, one day in the distant future, please if it has a romance system can you make the end result a little bit more than “they hang around your house” like, I kind of feel bad to do it given they just become slaves to my farm and lose all independence.

I think that’s all reasonable.

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anghraine · 8 years

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Having been wowed by your fanfic ("wandering inside this night" holds a special place in my RO heart), I'm curious: what is your writing/editing process like?

Oh, thank you!

My writing process really varies depending on what I’m doing, but I can explain it in terms of wandering inside this night.

It’s long and rambly, so you can scroll down for a very concise tl;dr version of The Process.

1. Eureka!

I pretty much always start out with 1) a vague sense of something I want to write about, and I sort of mentally fish around until I land on an idea, or 2) an idea pops into my head, or 3) some combination of both.

The last two are the most common for me—I have more ideas than I could ever write. With wandering, it was definitely that way.

I was hollering into my tags about the Cassian-Leia parallels pretty early, which … Jyn-Han is obvious, but I felt like the Cassian-Leia ones went relatively unnoticed but were probably more profound. And as spies in the ragtag ANH-era Rebellion, it’s more than possible that they’d know each other; I’d made babbling posts, but I really wanted to do something with it. So I sketched out a backstory in until the last chance is spent, but I still wanted more, and also to get into Han-Jyn at the same time, and also just—have something fun! And suddenly (I was actually at a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, lol) the idea popped into my head of jumping to the Han/Leia meltdown of 1980 with established relationship Jyn/Cassian.

2. Percolation

This is particularly important for longer fic (or any long-form writing, really), but it helps with shorter things, too. It’s where you’re not actively working to figure out details or more ideas, much less writing, just passively letting your mind wander. It’s best if you’re actually doing something else—something that doesn’t take much attention, but enough that you can’t completely focus on your thoughts, like showering or washing dishes or something.

When something does come to mind, I scribble it down (or stick it in a doc in some form that will hopefully make sense to me later). Sometimes it’ll be scraps of dialogue, or a phrase I want to make sure gets in somewhere, or a plot-point, just anything that pops up. Ideally, though, I don’t write anything beyond that—just note down anything I might forget and let my ideas develop freely.

Normally, I’d only do so much of that with something like wandering (fairly short, fairly light). But I ended up snowed in with my extended family, where I was both bored and unable to sit down and write. So I’m sitting there entertaining myself by imagining Jyn and Han, drinking buddies, and how that’d work with the Cassian-Leia brotp of ruthless idealism (Han would be jealous!), and just having that percolating in my head while I read fic and let stray thoughts pass through my mind. (‘Okay but Cassian would fucking hate Han’ being uppermost among them, lol)

3. Brainstorming/Outline

At this point, I try to pin down the free-floating ideas and/or organize what scraps I have into something coherent. With something longer, like ad astra, I generally do a pretty traditional outline—decide what the story is specifically going to cover, and where the things I’ve actually written fit with that, and what’s going to go in the spaces between.

It’s not classroom-style brainstorming; I usually brainstorm ideas by trying to put together an outline. I’ll be “okay, I want to start with something like that shot of Jyn on the platform with an Imperial ship at the end, but it’s Bodhi” and “they get sucked into the Death Star and Jyn exploits Cassian’s injuries to get in” and then I sit down and figure out how I’m going to get from one to the other. “Okay, so—there’s no way they can actually get Kaytoo, but maybe something—yeah, she just up and grabs his dismembered head l o l, okay, and there’s the jump into the ship which rattles Cassian further, and she’d try to treat him with whatever supplies are available, and we’d have Bodhi trying to get out without being shot down, and maybe I can work in the your father would have been proud of you line, and Jyn goes to check on Bodhi and they see the Death Star and…”

Also, it helps a ton to actually talk ideas over with someone else. With me, it’s generally @steinbecks—not some strict ‘this, then this, then this, tell me what you think’, but ‘I had this idea’ and ‘OK BUT IMAGINE IF’ and ‘haha yeah exactly’ and ‘shit you’re right they do change outfits’ etc.

4) Drafting (The Big One)

Ideally, I only get to this after nailing down an outline or at least getting a lot figured out in chats/notes to myself. That’s what I did for pretty much all my most successful longfics—First Impressions (f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth), Season of Courtship (Darcy and Elizabeth’s engagement), we get dark, only to shine (AU of The Borgias that moves the canon pairing getting together from S3 to S1), and now ad astra. It helps a TON if you have trouble with discipline and direction, as I do, because you can always go back to it and figure out where you need to be headed when you’re muddled/uninspired, even if some details change along the way. (They always do, for me.)

I did some of that with wandering, but … I was snowed-in, lol, and finally everyone had gone to sleep and my head was full of ideas. So I laid down with my laptop and just dove right in with the only clear line I had in mind:

Han Solo once had apleasant conversation with Cassian Andor.

Just once.

That was where I planned it to begin! The actual beginning came later, because I very quickly ran into a problem—the sentence worked to jump into exposition, not an actual scene. And with the exposition, I needed to introduce 1) Cassian’s hatred of Han, 2) Han’s lesser but firm dislike, 3) Cassian and Leia’s history together as spies, 4) Han’s brief and half-hearted attempt to suck up, 5) Jyn and Cassian being married, 6) Han’s friendship with Jyn, 7) Han’s jealousy as contrasted to Cassian and Jyn’s mutual trust, etc. Yikes.

So I kept getting mired down in explanations and flashbacks (I actually wrote the scene where Jyn drunkenly complains about finding something for Cassian’s birthday, lol) that slowed it down. And I wasn’t really happy with anything—I constantly niggled at sentences and moved things around and rephrased and it just didn’t work right. I actually have the document I worked in (I didn’t have Internet at the time), so you can see this sort of intermediate stage:

I niggled with it for the rest of the vacation, then it hit me that the issue was that starting a fic with exposition was the real problem. Starting with ESB-era Han just being ESB-era Han could let me work the exposition section in, and without the pressure of it being the opening section I could keep it to a tangential aside and move the jealousy around and so forth. And from there I could just leap to the canon scene with bonus Cassian-Leia shared indignation, and impulsively I added Kaytoo at the end.

Moral of the story: if you keep trying to make something work and it just won’t, there’s probably something deeper going on. Take a step back and figure out why it’s not working, and often you’ll be able to correct course. Once I tacked in that little ‘Han sulks’ section at the beginning, it all fell together easily.

5) Revising!

You can probably guess from #4 that I do a lot of this as I write rather than after I write. That’s true, to an extent.

It can be a very … I wouldn’t say discouraging, but sluggish way to write, because you end up struggling over phrases you might not even keep in the end. I genuinely think it’s best to at least try to restrain the impulse to polish everything, but at the same time, there are some of us who genuinely can’t keep going if the current section isn’t working (again, see #4!). So I allow myself a certain amount of freedom in polishing-as-I-go, while restraining the impulse to do anything more substantial. The single best way of doing this is sprinting—writing in short, timed bursts with little to no editing, ideally with a partner that you check in with. (Again, I generally do this with @steinbecks.)

However, even if you edit as you go and turn out pretty clean drafts, you should still revise at the end. What I generally do is, first of all, just quickly re-read. The writing process is a lot slower than the reading one, and it’s easy to get so focused on particular passages or sections that you lose sight of how it’s working as a whole. So that quick read-through is a way to back up and see how it’s holding together. It’s best if you give yourself a break before you do this—a day or two at least, to get your mind out of the writing mode and look at it with relatively fresh eyes.

(I will say that I almost never wait. But I do pretty much always end up editing chapters yet again in the first couple of days after I’ve posted them. Sometimes it’s contuinity, sometimes a passage that isn’t working quite the way I thought, whatever. There’s always something. It’s why the chapters I post at Dreamwidth are generally cleaner than the ones at Tumblr, which are cleaner than the first versions posted at AO3.)

However you do that read-through, the most important for me is the next one. At this point, I read the whole fic/chapter/essay/whatever from start to finish—out loud. In fact, if it’s possible, I’ll do a full-on dramatic reading. By reading aloud, you can catch things like typos that your mind silently corrects for your eyes, but also it’s easier to notice sentence-level problems like repeated words/phrases and unvaried sentence structure. If something makes me cringe when I read it aloud, I cut it or rewrite. If saying it aloud makes it sound wrong for the character, it probably is wrong for the character. Sometimes I do the dramatic reading revision two or three times.

And then I either post or print!

The short version:

1) I get an idea, 2) I let the ideas develop without thinking too hard about them, 3) I nail down and think up specific ideas, mostly through chat and/or outlines, 4) I plow through a draft, rearranging/adding material if things just aren’t working, and 5) I revise, once with a quick re-read of the whole thing, and then again by slowly reading it aloud to myself to catch problems with (primarily) mechanics, voice, and word choice.

#faithfullyfalse #respuestas #nice things people say to me #fic talk #esb au #words about words #thank you for this!#in my other life i've taught writing so this was like SING THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE

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orchestratingkitty · 8 years

Text

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. When I first heard Jensen say Destiel doesn’t exist, I was (like most of the Destiel fandom) pretty hurt. I’ve since seen people attack him, people critique him, people defend him, and people applaud him. So I’m gonna go one-by-one through the most common responses I’ve seen in the past couple days and debunk them.

“He’s cute and hot! How could anyone say he’s a homophobe?”

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Homophobes don’t look a certain way. You could see an ugly homophobe standing next to a hot as hell homophobe and they’d both be homophobes. The way Jensen Ackles looks doesn’t change the way he is on the inside. Good that we got the dumbest thing anyone’s ever said out of the way.

“He has gay friends/family members, so he isn’t homophobic.”

Uh huh. I once had a discussion with a white dude who loved saying the n word. He loved it. It was his favorite word. He claimed that he had a black friend who was cool with him doing it and thus he used it all the time. The dude had a black friend! Maybe more! Does that change the fact that he was racist? Hell no. There’s actual LGBT+ people out there who have internalized homophobia. If gay people can be homophobic, then why would we dismiss the homophobia of a man who just knows gay people?

“Lots of terrible things happen to him at cons. He’s mistreated.”

This is really true. He is groped and sexually harassed (from what I’ve read) at photo-ops and people ask him uncomfortable questions all the time. This is irrelevant, however. Everyone goes through hard things. Everyone. That doesn’t mean they have the right to say stupid, homophobic shit without consequences. The next time you want to argue on behalf of your favorite actor, do him the justice of making it a relevant and sensible argument.

“He was just stating his opinion.”

Yeah, in the rudest way possible. I’d have much preferred if he answered in the way Jared had when asked about Eileen. “Dean doesn’t room for romance right now” would have been a totally acceptable and neutral way of handling the question. You’re not promising anything and you’re not insulting anybody. The way he answered was beyond stating an opinion - it was rude and that is my main problem with it.

“He gets flustered at cons! He’s shy!”

He has done this before. He’s insulted Destiel before - sometimes to the point where he seemed to support Dean and Cas not having any sort of relationship. He’s never apologized. You know who else is shy? Me. And you guys aren’t gonna say “she gets flustered” before sending me hate for saying this about Jensen. No, you’re gonna attack me anyway. I’m barely an adult and he’s a middle-aged man but you’d be fine with ripping me a new one for critiquing his PR skills. That makes sense.

“Destiel is a fanservice ship.”

No, it isn’t. It’s the exact opposite. People ship Destiel because Cas and Dean have practically tangible chemistry and if one of them were a chick, they’d have banged a long time ago. Don’t fight me on this - it’s true. The biggest argument against it being fanservice is the fact that fans aren’t getting anything they want. They get queerbaiting instead. As I’ll discuss later, you cannot compare the average straight ship with a queer ship. They’re not the same. They don’t get canon/debunked for the same reasons. They’re not treated the same by the creators so we as fans can’t lose sight of their differences either. Hello? Homophobia exists? Jesus, you’d think this goes without saying.

“People shouldn’t ask ship related questions anyway.”

I’ve seen this one debunked already, but I feel like it needs to be said more to get into some people’s thick skulls. I guess I agree. The cast is not responsible for deciding where the story will go. They do not decide which ship becomes canon or not and even though they have views of where a character’s mindset is at times, they can’t be the final authority. I honestly couldn’t care less if Jensen is made uncomfortable by these questions, though. Mainly this is because he isn’t uncomfortable with people talking about straight ships or even about Dean fucking his car. Honestly? Getting “flustered” by a question about a queer ship is fucking pathetic. Jensen. You’re a grown ass man. Grow up. You’re not Dean. No one is accusing you of not being a straight man, okay? No need to be so defensive. Your masculinity isn’t being called into question, so you can put away your macho act and be a human being again, okay?

“Destiel doesn’t exist.”

Where? On the show? Maybe not. They are fictional characters, if that’s what you mean. No, it isn’t real. Neither is Dean Winchester. Neither is Castiel. None of it exists, in reality. But in regards to the fictional realm, what Jensen said was stupid because it simply wasn’t true. Destiel does exist. Thousands of fans interpret Cas and Dean’s relationship to be romantic and thus, to some extent, it exists. I wasn’t gonna say anything about queerbaiting, but the amount of unscripted touching between the two on the show should raise eyebrows now if it doesn’t exist. But if it really and truly doesn’t exist then where is all the defensiveness coming from? Why are people wasting their time making anti-blogs about it, if there’s no threat of it becoming canon? Why are people so passionate about hating it if it isn’t real? You guys do all the arguing for me, don’t you?

This isn’t a common argument, but you get this a lot: “Good job, Jensen, for telling those Destihellers off.”

Jensen Ackles, this is a warning. You’re getting yourself associated with the wrong sort. You do not want people to think you’re warming up to them, I promise. It is probably the shittiest PR move you could make, aligning yourself with homophobes. Don’t be proud of what you said. It was rude and cold and you were insulting a lot of the SPNfamily in the process. No one is saying you have to support Destiel, but this is disgusting.

Okay - here it goes (this has to be said):

It’s been five days since Trump was inaugurated into the presidency and he’s already promised to eliminate LGBT+ rights by placing FADA on his list of priorities. Jensen, you shouldn’t have said anything that could be construed as homophobic. Queer kids all over the country are terrified of how they’ll be treated in the future if FADA gets passed. Right now, you should be supporting these kids, helping them trust themselves, helping them feel assured. Instead, you’re bashing what a lot of people like me are clinging to. You can argue I’m just distracting from the argument, but this is relevant. Jensen is American. He knows what’s going on. Within days of Trump’s inauguration (was it two days after? I don’t remember.), he’s put salt on a wound.

It’s rare to find an LGBT+ character on TV who isn’t a goddamn stereotype. Bi and trans characters are especially hard to find. Bi characters are often ridiculously one-dimensional - a bi girl has a threesome, a bi guy is hiding that he’s actually gay. A lot of bi people like me love that Dean (who we interpret to be bisexual) is not a stereotype. He isn’t what straight people look at and think of as “gay” or “bi”. We cling to him because we’re living in a world where even people in the LGBT+ community can be biphobic. And Jensen just spat in our faces.

Speaking of, can all you non-bi or pan LGBT+ folk please stop using that when defending him? As in, please stop saying “as an LGBT+ person, y’all are overreacting”. If you’re not bi, this might not hurt you as much. I’ve seen gay people actually say “Destiel wouldn’t do anything for gay representation”. In actuality, we’re aiming for bi representation and seeing as you’re gay you have no right to say what would or wouldn’t help in terms of representation. I’m bi and I’m not overreacting. Other bi people out there who had their hearts broken aren’t overreacting. Though, as LGBT+, you should be concerned too. This is about a lot more than just a ship, guys. Thanks to homophobia, not all ships are created equal, and straight ships are not the same as queer ones.

I used to watch Gossip Girl when I was in middle school (embarrassing, I know). Every possible combination of straight ships had at some point become canon - even the more far-fetched ones. Every single one. I’ve since started disliking the show, but it is a useful comparison. No one complains when people bring up Dean/Amara (which was canonically nonconsensual) or Dean/Lisa at cons. They’re ships, too! I thought ships weren’t an appropriate topic at cons? Or is it okay because they’re straight? Is it okay because they actually have a shot? The fact that queer ships are clung onto so desperately due to the likelihood of them never coming true is tragic. We shouldn’t be afraid to say we ship something gay. We shouldn’t be afraid to bring it up in conversation. We should feel the same wobbly uncertainty that is inspired by straight ships. It should be a question of “will they won’t they” (and not in a queerbaiting way) instead of a feeling of “well, I know because it’s gay it’ll never happen but I still think it’s cute.” Most fan-favorite straight ships become canon in some way or another (across the board, in all TV shows) while queer ships are sneered at and thought of as taboo (the fact that Dean/Elena - a ridiculous straight crack ship - gets less hate and question marks than Destiel is a pretty good example of this. Honestly, you guys are fucking sad sometimes).

Why do we have to give up or surrender our ship just because it’s gay? That’s bullshit and I refuse.

I’m not saying Jensen is homophobic, I guess. Don’t attack me for it (or if you do, don’t use any of the arguments I’ve refuted. You’ll look like an idiot). He is obviously uneducated in regards to this. His comment was thoughtless and ignored context and timing. He said something rude that hurt people for all sorts of reasons. He has room to grow and if he does come forward and patch this up, I’ll be the first one to cry tears of joy. I’m against people sending him hate or death threats. Please don’t. Not only is that disgusting, but it sure as hell doesn’t convince him that we’re reasonable people who just want their ship acknowledged.

Also, if someone accuses you of being homophobic, instead of being defensive, maybe think of why they’d say so, and fix that.

Don’t be too quick to defend him. He’s an adult. He can do that himself. All you LGBT+ people out there shouldn’t be apologizing for him, either. Stand by those of us who are genuinely and rightfully hurt. What he said isn’t okay and nobody who’s hurt here is overreacting. If you think this isn’t a big deal, you’re not looking at the whole picture. There is a war being fought in regards to LGBT+ representation in media and someone claiming that gay-shippers are delusional is not helping.

I’m actually hoping that this will receive 0 notes and no one will see it. Like I’ve said, I’m super shy and I don’t really wanna tag this with anything someone will find but at the same time, it annoys me how this has gotten brushed over. I’m posting so late because it took a while for me to actually process my thoughts into something comprehensible.

#spn wank #spn #fuck man im actually scared #so much for protecting the flustered right?

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ardenttheories · 5 years

Text

Weird notes and thoughts on Pesterquest: Volume 6, under the cut because this shit got long.

GAMZEE

Gamzee calls the Reader “sister”? Several times, in fact.

The Rage symbol is hidden in Gamzee’s pie.

Gamzee “moves on marianette strings” and his eyes flash as he stands up, which indicates that the movement is controlled by someone else (additionally that refusing to eat pie immediately loses him his free will?)

Either Gamzee is being funded by someone/something, or we’re literally just seeing troll Amazon in action.

The reader is a colossal dumbass for leaving a raging highblood to see “what would happen” in the future (although maybe if they’d stuck around they would’ve seen much sooner what was going to happen)

Gamzee, when raging, doesn’t want to see himself; he goes out of his way to destroy every reflective surface

When raging, Gamzee always scars his face. He does it here, too - which seems odd. Either he did it himself, or Kanaya did it - either way, it must be symbolic.

(Amended to the above, maybe the slash represents the Bardic Split - which we see fully when half of Gamzee is sucked up into Lil Cal. Slashed face = full Rage Bard)

The Reader mentions that they feel like they’ve seen everything as if someone else did it, so we’ve got that same odd instance of Reader remembering other timelines - which means there isn’t one “Alpha” Reader, and that all outcomes merge back into the Reader eventually.

Someone “spoke to Gamzee” about the truth of the world. If he thinks the Reader is going to “meet him soon”, maybe he means someone in the Dreambubbles? Like LE?

Considering this is a timeline where Gamzee goes off the wall and kills everyone (or so it seems, since he’s yet to be stopped), could this allude to the honk HONK timeline? Can’t remember if they ever entered the game or not. It’d be a nice touch if so!

The pie is definitely NOT something you’re meant to eat, and I’d assume the initial nausea is Reader’s body trying to reject it before the effects kick in. Now we know what it’s like, there’s literally no surprise that Gamzee eats the pie all the time. It really does dampen him - but with a much stronger, more immediate effect.

(Amended to the above, if Gamzee is easily influenced to Split as soon as he stops eating the pie, then consistently eating is key. Explains why even refusing to eat once hashes him out.)

“Someone wants you to forget. Forget all of your friends and past adventures”. So, Reader is likely still very much under Doc Scratch’s control? Or if not Doc Scratch, then something else (maybe just the narrative) - but interesting to note how it doesn’t work while Reader is high.

The sopor slime really must block out any and all attempts from outside influences to control the mental flow of the consuming character.

Trying to go to the Friendsim timeline causes something very wrong to occur; Reader is literally blocked out from it, and managing to do it seems to fuck everything up for a split second. I have no idea what the T-posing alien was for, though.

VRISKA

“You step on a weird bug and you don’t even care” that’s a reference but I can’t for the life of me remember it. EDIT: FOUND IT. Page 797 of Homestuck, titled “Jade: Lose interest in fauna and never speak of it again”, the narrative details her being a majestic beast and ends with “you eat a weird bug and don’t even care”.

The Reader is still being forced to make new friends. Even when their feelings are very much against this - and I assume they are still struggling with that concept of doing things with no meaning - their narrative is forcing them to do it.

Vriska trans.

Vriska steals Reader’s luck. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it, I think, but I’m assuming that’s what it is. I’m also assuming this is why the Reader can’t speak out against her at first, and all of our options are just one box; she’s stealing their narrative importance, too, and the only good outcomes are ones that favour her and her ego/character.

Vriska deciding not to rag on Reader for up-chucking is oddly kind of her, but at the same time you’re getting this really heavy handed sense that she’s a lonely girl - the same one we got in her conversations with John in actual Homestuck. Feels like this might replicate that sort of friendship? Where she ends up opening up to John prior to going after Jack Noir about her life and how much she dislikes it.

On top of that, she seems genuinely upset when the Reader leaves. Vriska wants friends but has no idea how to make them, although that doesn’t admittedly excuse her actions towards Kanaya - though it does show more about how conflicted she is as a person.

Reader can just open up the game client at will. Reader if you ever touch the close window button I will destroy you.

Reader really dislikes having a name. It’s not a comfortable facet of their being, despite having shown they own one - likely because they’re just meant to be a vessel for our whims, and therefore shouldn’t have a name.

More implications that the Reader is living multiple canons at once that then merge together into a singular Reader at the end, since here they already know Vriska’s name before being told (which they do, in one route).

Like with the humans, Vriska can’t actually control the Reader. More hints to Reader being human? Or just to Vriska’s inability to control something that isn’t Alternian?

This Reader is, in fact, the Reader from the comic - the Land of Stumps and Dismay is clearly referenced.

Boldir appearing is so fucking sad. Poor Reader. In a more genuine sense, though, Pesterquest seems to be trying to say here that this offshoot of Homestuck isn’t fake unless we see it as such - and that, I assume, something good (and perhaps will) come of it. The Reader has complete freedom to do as they please, even if they’re still a puppet on strings for the moment - if they can remember, then they can fix it.

More clarity on the Reader; their memories are, indeed, locked away. Not gone entirely, but repressed by Doc Scratch for the purpose of the story. On top of that, Reader was definitely being used to set Act 2 of Hiveswap in place. Vibes well with the announcement of Act 2′s trailer.

This story is for the Reader - and always has been. It doesn’t belong to “them” - which I assume means Doc Scratch and Dirk, perhaps? This isn’t their story. It’s ours. “What will you do?” Vibes well with Homestuck^2′s fanonicity.

Oof. Doc Scratch returns to knock Reader down. Reader, supposedly, is only relevant because Doc Scratch says they are - as an observer, as a vessel for the story. The story can go on without Reader (although I highly suspect that it can’t, since Doc Scratch mentions “the really important bits” would survive without them - e.g. Meat could go on, but Candy couldn’t, and Pesterquest is a mix of both.)

Did Doc Scratch really just call Reader “darling”? And more references to the Reader and little girls. I’m starting to get a fairly female-vibe here when combined with Gamzee’s prior references to the Reader as “sister”. Which is ironic when you consider that the women in Homestuck tend to be the ones that carry the plot along, and the men tend to be the hands that enact it out.

Doc Scratch isn’t “the one doing this”, whatever that means. I’m assuming something along the lines of “are you controlling the narrative? Are you making this happen?” But he clearly is, I think, unless the strings we saw don’t belong to him. Or he could be refering to something else entirely, or going a bit meta (thereby saying no, he isn’t doing it, but Hussie is). Might need to think on that more.

What is the scratchy voice that screams “fix this”? Hopefully this means in the next few volumes, Reader is going to start remembering more and trying to fix the timeline - or at least stop it from being one heaving big paradox.

Vriska is really not happy about having to feed her lusus. I know it’s gone over in Homestuck, but it’s way more evident here; she does not want to do this. I think it’s sad, too, that she feels betrayed and hurt when Reader doesn’t turn around. Maybe she knows how bad it looks and knows that the Reader standing up to her makes her seem the villain? That Reader’s suddenly the hero trying to stop the big baddy from killing the innocent trolls that she doesn’t even want to kill?

Oh. Huh yeah that’s exactly what she thinks, I just didn’t read far enough before typing. I wonder how often this has happened? Or if she’s just adamantly aware that every time she feeds someone to her lusus, she’s being a bad guy - while being a victim at the same time, and struggling between the two views.

Poor Vriska. Her sobbing at the end fucking hurts. How many friends has she had to feed to her beast of a mother?

Vriska’s lusus talks to her constantly. That’s got to be hell, going through your life knowing that your mother is demanding more food from people you actually, genuinely like if you want to not be eaten by her as well.

Vriska turned on Terezi after the revenge thing because “that’s what you do to backstabbers”. I wonder if she even wanted to, then, or if she did it because she felt betrayed and hurt and that was how she dealt with being betrayed by someone who knew that she did what she did because she couldn’t not do it?

Her being down that Terezi doesn’t care anymore makes a lot of sense as to why she tried to use Kanaya to get back in with Karkat and Terezi. I think, more than anything, Vriska hates being ignored. She can handle being hated so long as there are still people there - but when they leave, and people always leave, then she’s left on her own to deal with a life she really does not enjoy.

Vriska’s concept of love is horrifically skewed by her perception of herself and of romance as dictated by Mindfang’s journal. She thinks there’s this person she has to be and she struggles deeply with it. Quite literally, tables in player handbooks that tell her who she is and what she has to do.

She’s not content with Kanaya because she thinks Kanaya sees her as something broken that needs to be fixed - which isn’t wrong, because Kanaya is trying to change her for the better, without wholly knowing what’s going on and making a lot of misconceptions because Vriska doesn’t know how to talk to her about the truth - and therefore she sees a lot of what Kanaya does as just another person wanting something from her.

I’m assuming the other “she” she mentions is Terezi - aka Terezi is the only person who cuts through the self doubt and the self hatred and these concepts of who she should be (and the voice of her lusus literally telling her she’s not good enough, on top of ther own doubts). Which would explain why Terezi’s betrayal hurts her so much.

Reader pointing out that Vriska let her guard down around Terezi only to be betrayed and force her to put up a stronger guard? That shit hurtes. Case in point, though; Vriska sets up this guard around her because she can’t afford not to (because she’ll either get hurt or end up having to feed the troll to her lusus anyway).

Vriska can save her friends by feeding her lusus enough trolls - so, more death to keep the people she likes alive. Though she mentions Karkat in line with this? Did Karkat ever meet Vriska IRL?

Schoolfeeds indoctrinate the trolls with the idea that they have to kill everyone below them so they’re more viciously okay with killing any species out in space - which are naturally lower than them in status by warrant of “not being Alternians”.

Vriska wants to be like Mindfang literally right after mentioning how Mindfang joined the Summoner’s rebellion? She really wants to change what Alternia is like. I’d go so far as to say she gives 0 fucks about the hemospectrum in truth. Seems like she wants a better world for everyone, though - not just herself.

Oof. Vriska’s self image is likely severely fucked up by her lusus. Must really fuck a 13 year old girl up to be told you’re fatter than your mom and you have to bring her more kids to feed her. Especially when you’re dying and she refuses to stop even then.

You’re looking at a survivor. At someone who did nothing wrong. FUCK that hits hard. I love the comments about Dave, Rose, and Jade, too - and the specific exclusion of John. That ramps up my “all the kids suffered prior to the game, gained what they wanted after the game - except John, who is an inversion of that” theory for his Classpect.

Reader’s taking control of the narrative! I repeat! Reader’s TAKING CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE! Now this bodes well to future volumes, and makes me wonder if this is the first step to the Reader fixing everything.

#pesterquest spoilers #long post//#ardenttheories

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