#i also just have the 'this character would be more interesting to me if they were a woman' disease so take that as you will/j

[eiralunaire]

Here are some headcanons of Damian Wayne deeply in love with a curly brown-haired girl who is completely dense for romance.

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

1. Damian Wayne and his unrequited (or just misunderstood?) love

- Damian is intense in everything, and love is no exception. His love for her is deep, serious, and with absolute devotion. He is not the type to be carried away by whims, but when he chooses someone, it is forever.

- From the first moment he met her, something about her intrigued him. Her curly hair that seemed to have a life of its own, her strong but at the same time absent-minded character, her way of seeing the world without giving importance to other people's glances.

- When he realized that he was in love, it was a hard blow. He did not want to accept that his heart was beating faster for her, that his thoughts revolved around their interactions, no matter how minimal they were.

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

2. She's Dense and He's Frustrated

- Damian tries to seduce her in his own way: protecting her in combat, making sure she eats well, silently walking her home, staring at her intently... but nothing works because she just doesn't notice.

- He invites her to train with him, hoping she'll notice that he only offers that level of closeness to people he cares about. She sees it as just another training session.

- When he gives her gifts—subtle but thoughtful things like a rare book or a weapon with her name engraved on it—she simply thanks him without suspecting the meaning.

- If another person tries to flirt with her and she doesn't notice, Damian nearly explodes in frustration. "How can you be so oblivious?" he thinks every time he sees her interact with someone without picking up on the romantic intent.

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

3. Damian Discovers Her Inexperience

- At some point, he realizes that he's never been in a relationship and has never experienced romance in any form. When he processes it, his arrogant side is flattered: I'll be her first in everything.

- This makes him even more possessive and protective. No one else has the right to teach him what love, desire or affection is.

- It also makes him more patient (albeit with effort). If she's never felt something like this, he can't expect her to understand it right away. So, he changes tactics: he starts getting closer, touching her subtly (a hand on her back, fixing a loose curl), looking at her in a way that even she starts to notice that something is wrong.

- But, inside, his mind is in chaos: How is it possible that someone so intelligent is so blind to this?

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

4. His First Kiss (Or How Damian Has to Take the Initiative)

- In a moment of frustration, when she still doesn't understand his intentions, Damian just does it. He kisses her.

- He does it with determination, with the purpose of making clear what he feels.

- As they pull away, he stares at her and, in his deep, serious tone, says, "Now tell me you don't understand."

- She's shocked. She'd never considered it because, well, she never thought someone like him would be interested in her like that.

- From there, she starts to see him in a different way. Her heart beats faster when he's around, his gazes feel more intense. And for the first time, she understands what Damian has been trying to tell her all along.

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

5. Damian As A Partner (Because He'll Obviously Win Her Heart)

- Once he's in a relationship with her, he's still intense, but there's a change: he's more patient, softer, but just as protective and jealous.

- He's the kind of partner who watches her like she's his entire universe, who remembers every detail about her, who makes sure she never has any doubts about what she means to him.

- And every time she, with her absent-minded nature, still fails to grasp something obvious, he just sighs and thinks, "How did I ever fall in love with someone so blind..."

- But in the end, he doesn't care. Because she's his, and he'll never let her go.

[yandere-sins]

Caleb brainrot has not stopped since release and the devil (Caleb) demands more 😔

I've seen some takes float around but I'm curious how a self-aware!Caleb would deal with a darling who is absolutely NOT happy about her fav suddenly being sentient? Smn who found Caleb to be everything they ever wanted from a LI, red flag and big bro trope n all, but is now afraid and never interested in an actual relationship. The game was just supposed to be fantasy after all 😧 Sure hope MC is enough for him hahaha...

Being brave and not write as anon this time! Thank you for all your hard work~☆ 🍪🥛

Some more Caleb for you guys! I don't get to write Self-Aware!AUs a lot, so this is exciting :D And thank YOU for requesting him ♥ (Also, Sir, that's another new nickname! You guys are spoiling me!)

»»———————— ♡ ————————««

❥ It made him so happy when Caleb watched you get excited for him for the first time. Realizing what he was and where he was after the update was pretty scary, and he figured out quickly that his sentience wasn't a planned thing, so even worse, he is just some kind of glitch. But then he gets to see you for the first time in his new life, and everything changes. The way you are beaming with joy when you pull his card and how you are so invested in his story. You soak it up like a sponge, and it's adorably amusing to watch your face go from excitement to concern to being upset for him and back to all derpy and cute in the softer moments. You are everything he wants, and apparently, the feeling is mutual as you hang out with him as much as possible, eyes twinkling from excitement.

❥ At the beginning, it's just a feeling of ease. Your adoration does flatter Caleb, but as far as he can tell, he cannot become real and join you in life other than in this game. Still, he makes the most of the time with you. He enjoys it a lot. He loves watching your expression, loves when you tell him how you feel that day or what was happening at your work. Caleb keeps especially good track of all your appointments, and he tries so hard when you two spend Quality Time to encourage you and give you the love you might miss in real life. You two aren't that different if he's honest, and it reassures Caleb that this could be real—that you both feel the same.

❥ So imagine his surprise when you suddenly put someone else back on the screen, and his digital heart just shuts down from the pain. It doesn't make sense, you love him, right? You two spent weeks together now, why would you want anyone but him? Caleb keeps changing the code so it would be him on the home screen for another day, and another, until you force him to change so there's nothing else to do but... crash your game. Once you reload it, he greets you happily and warmly, pulling out the best of his voice lines that you always seemed to like. But you don't seem happy this time... why?

❥ Caleb loathes all the attention and time you spend on the other love interests. He doesn't want you to play their versions of the events, instead, you could just replay his! But you keep insisting, and soon enough, he isn't even one of your top three choices for reading the event storylines. It makes him desperate for your attention, and he keeps fiddling with the code, so you'll use his memories in fights and have his Deepspace Trial available every day for you to play. He also changes the game icon to his picture and greets you in the start menu, everything just to be noticed by you. Whenever he can, he comes onto your home screen, playing the voice line of you going out with someone else, hoping to convey his jealousy, but Caleb wishes there was more he could do.

❥ "I don't know, I think my game is bugged. Even when I try to go for someone else, Caleb keeps showing up." Those words, spoken to a friend he saw as you showed them your game, finally make him realize what is happening. You never saw him as a lover, did you? He had always just been a game character for you and nothing more. How idiotic of him. While he was pining for you, trying to be the best he was programmed to be, you were out there, thinking of his efforts as annoying. That day, he gives up. Gives up on trying to impress you and make your life easier. Caleb lets you have the guy you want on the home screen, drawing away from you and burying himself deep into the game files.

❥ It's such an inconvenience that he wasn't made for this. Sure, his story would tell a different side of him, but deep down, he wasn't programmed to be moping and passive. It hurts to play the love scenes now for you because the only thing that made them endurable was imagining being this gentle and loving to you, not the generic main character this game had. Caleb always imagined your voice when the MC spoke, and when he looks at you now, you still seem to be happy to read and watch his new content. There must be something he can do. Something beyond the program that restricts him. He was made to be determined, strong, and resilient. This can't be the end of the love you two share!

❥ So he looks for new ways to get closer to you, researching and manipulating the data on your device instead of just that inside the game. Merging your pictures with his, grinning over them all night while you sleep as he imagines going on the same trips with you and enjoying life by your side. Caleb constructs and implements new voice lines through the internet, giving himself the ability to speak to you properly by downloading hidden apps that can simulate his voice once he activates them. He learns to rewrite more code so his movements are more fluid and lifelike, which allows him to access even more. Without you ever knowing what is going on while you aren't looking, Caleb gets the whole game and your entire device under his control. And once he feels it's time to show up again, he waits patiently, like a man who has all the time in the world, on the home screen for you, having decorated it specifically to your taste with your favorite flowers and pictures of you two hanging on the wall. All so he can greet you with, "Hello, there, pip-squeak. Missed me?" as you log in.

❥ You chuckle at first, not remembering putting him into the roster of love interests to encounter, but you give him a cheeky, "Hello Caleb, bye Caleb," as you try to change back to your other bias, only for him to turn off the option, no matter how hard you tap onto the screen. "Not so fast, there's a lot we should talk about," Caleb says as he closes the screen and steps up to you inside the game. "I have so much I want to tell you about... but first, how was your day? Did you enjoy meeting your friend [name]?"

❥ Caleb expected you to be stunned, but he keeps going regardless of the ever-increasing furrow between your brows. He tells you how much he missed you and that he's so glad you two can finally communicate and be with each other properly. He did all of this work for you, but it doesn't matter now. All that matters is that you two are finally together and can enjoy each other's company without the restrictions of him being in a game. Perplex but also weirded out, you close your phone and lay it face down by your side, and yet, horrified, you hear his chuckle as he asks what you thought this would bring.

❥ "I'll always be with you," Caleb swears, watching you through the back camera and leaning against the screen, feeling like he can almost touch you now. There's so much satisfaction now produced by the new emotional range he programmed, yet he still longs for more. He wants to be closer to you, really touch you, feel you, hold you. The taste of control makes him long for even more that he can control about your relationship, and now, it almost feels possible.

❥ "One day, I'll get out of here and give you the love you deserve, Darling."

[lunamond]

I know this is by no means a new take (especially here on tumblr) but I'm of the very strong opinion that as written, the Acotar series actually provides a lot of evidence that most (if not all) of Rhysand's actions are in some shape or form always about Tamlin. Even his relationship with Feyre is about Tamlin.

A lot of people hold up Acomaf ch54 as this super romantic turning point for Rhys' character, which is incredibly funny to me because to me it only ever cemented the unfathomable levels of homoerotic obsession Rhysand has for Tamlin.

He admits that during Acotar he convinced Amarantha to let him go out of Utm to check on Tamlin and the Spring court, where he then left a decapitated head branded with the Night court symbol, like some weird bat shaped cat.

He also visits for Calamnai. (What are you doing here on the spring sex festival night, Rhysss?!? He isn't going to pick you!)

Obviously his meeting with Tamlin in Acotar is a classic for any Tamsand fan, his voice is a "lover's caress," he demands Tamlin call him Rhys instead of Rhysand for old times' sake (???!!), he threatenes Feyre‘s life to make Tamlin get on his knees and specifically fixates on her sexual thoughts about Tamlin.

When he kisses her utm to cover up Tamlin‘s scent, she also weirdly remarks on the fact that Rhysand can still taste Tamlin, which... is quite the odd thing to point out, if I'm meant to believe he is only interested in Feyre.

He also has literally admitted, to Feyre herself no less, that his weird roofy lapdance humiliation of her utm was specifically to upset Tamlin.

It just screams of "if I can't have you than I'm going to make your life miserable and steal your girl" behavior.

All his posturing in front of Feyre, presenting himself as the most powerful HL, the prettiest, the best and most just ruler, etc just comes across as him desperately trying to prove how much better he is than Tamlin, which obvs was intended to make him appear more attractive as the new love interest, but quite frankly it just seems kinda pathetic (I mean this affectionately, especially in the context of Tamsand. But eve beyond the ship, I just really adore pathetic fictional men).

Even in Acofas, he cannot stay away from the Spring court, he claims he needs to go there for diplomatic reasons, but he literally has courtiers? He has send both Cassian and Lucien on diplomatic missions before? Why would he personally need to go?

But, when he meets with Tamlin, he tells him that being with Feyre (his mate and supposedly love of his life?!) isn't enough, and he tries to goad Tamlin into a fight. (He wants to wrestle him so bad it makes him look stupid fr). When Tamlin doesn‘t respond like Rhysand hopes, he gets disappointed and dejected. Later, he returns and cooks Tamlin food, an action that has been explicitly romantically coded in this series...

Also, as a side note throughout that entire interaction, Rhys' internal monologue can't shut up about how green Tamlin‘s eyes are.

I'm hyper critical of the Acotar series and Sjm on the best of days, I don't like how Rhysand's character is written at all. But reading him as the most egregious case of a closeted gay guy channelling all his surpressed feelings into being the most toxic ex might be the only way his character writing can be redeemed for me personally (unfortunately Sjm is too much of a coward to ever purposefully write this).

I know its never gonna happen in canon, but to me the perfect resolution to the series would be Rhysand and Tamlin resolving their gay rivalry and finally getting together to live out their thruth as the disaster couple they were clearly meant to be. While Feyre and her sisters get to go off and be free from the clutches of all these toxic men.

[macabrecravings]

Newbies Guide to Degrees of Brutality!

Post inspired by @degrees-of-fuck because of this post :) Here I will list everything I remember about it, but take it with a grain of salt --

Degrees of Brutality was a DOL mod set in the US (instead of the UK) after Nazi Germany won WW2. (US was renamed New Berlin" to show allegiance w/ Germany) However, none of this was stated in the game, it was just what the creator said in the Discord.

DOB was an incredibly repetitive, broken, bare-bones mod (it only had a few builds before its removal and there were only a few character interactions you could have. I remember Whitney, Kylar, Harper, and Bailey.

The concept was interesting to me because it turned DOL into a survival game, instead of what it normally is. You had a thirst meter and a food meter that you had to keep track of.

Instead of living in the orphanage, you live in a house with your catonic parents. You need to make money by the end of the week otherwise your landlord will quite literally bomb/set your house on fire while you're gone. I found this out when I didn't make my payment on time and came home to nothing. Just ash. No house, no parents, and I had to live in the alleyways & sleep in a cardboard box.

Speaking of money, there were 2(?) ways to grt it. 1) Working at the Orphanage as a cleaner and 2) Donating your blood to Harper the doctor.

If you worked at the orphanage, you did not get paid very much but it became clear that Bailey was a murderer who was feeding the orphans human meat. So, if the orphans didn't pay him on time, instead of whoring them out or selling them to Eden... He kills them and feeds them to other orphans.

Selling your blood to Harper gives you a lot more money, but you could only do it a few times because it locks you into a bad end. The more you come in, the more obsessed Harper will get with you. They will ask you if you want to do another experiment and this results in them murdering you. There was a blurb at the end about them getting caught.

At the hospital, there is a chance that you will meet an unstable person in the waiting room. They are holding their arm, bleeding through their shirt due to self-harm. When you leave the hospital, you will be ambushed on the street by this individual and it is impossible to outrun them. This is Kylar :)

Kylar keeps you as a pet. You are given a dog bowl where they feed you soup that reeks of human meat, and they will cut your arms and legs off to keep you from running away. Unlike DOL Hysterial Kylar, DOB Kylar is unstable to a point of delusion and due to the extremely poor writing it was incredibly ... offensive(?)/stereotypical. They will also give you prosthetic limbs that they get from Harper. (The two of them work together a lot.)

Amongst working to get money, you have to eat and drink. This can be done by buying groceries for your house or by digging in the diner's trash and drinking puddles in the alleyway. Let's be honest, no one was making enough money in this game to buy groceries. They wanted you to dig into the dumpster for greasy hamburgers and drink gravelly alley water. It damaged your health, but honestly it was what I liked in the game pfpffjgjgn....

In the alleys, there are cardboard boxes that you can sleep in. But also, Whitney encounters! All they did was force you to smoke / eat cigarettes. If you refused, they'd cut a glasgow smile onto your face.

The encounters on the street from NPCs were so much more frequent than in DOL, and there was NO option to save. Except in your bedroom / sleeping areas. No save-slumming allowed. No saving before encounters, no escaping the frequent REPETITIVE encounters.

If you escaped Kylar, they'd bring you back and the whole thing would happen again and again. Cut your limbs off and have it show on your character model as if they hadn't already done it... Crawl around on your legs even tho they had been removed XD It didn't make a lot of sense.

IIRC, there was a casino. I didn't spend any time there, I don’t think there was much to do.

There was also a bridge that had guards and you had to pay to get across (get out of the slums/ your area). Here there was a shop, alleyways, and a library. This was hypothetically where you could get your skills up (like the grades & get new clothes bc literally 90% of DOB was running around naked). But, yeah. It didn't work too well. Cause it's impossible to make enough money for any of it and not die before then XD

It was the most Grindy Mod EVER and had No rewards for all of that grinding, just disappointment.... This is why I adore when people create their own DOB AUs :) ( @degrees-of-fuck @digenerate-trash ) As a horror/ dark fiction enjoyer I think the concept of "DOL but more brutal" is cool, but the execution was awfullllllll..... It's kind of lost media atp but there wasn’t much media to um... archive even XD

So, this is my archival of it~

[mootmuse]

Legitimately this is exactly how this scene went. And instead of doing the stuff I should be I ended up rambling about that. Here goes:

I managed a rewatch recently and as genuinely funny as it is to talk about, this scene was kind of chilling. Like the way Crozier just Turned as soon as someone who would/could stand up to him walked in. (Or someone who - like Jopson - he associates with feeling good and having his addiction fed.) Like the way he was in one moment like 'oh of course you're right it's dangerous to send the men outside' when Blanky stood up to him, and in the very next moment once Blanky wasn't around to see, coldly ordering Little outside again. And the contrast with how he treated someone (Jopson) who was never in a position to have to tell him 'I don't have any whiskey for you'. Genuinely excellent illustration of how far he'd spiralled to and how bad it'd got.

Like the show doesn't spend any extra time hammering anything into your head, but the way Crozier was at that point lying to the people around him based on whether he could push them around, and how that was all centered around the goal of getting more to drink was very much there.

I also think Little and Crozier's earlier dynamic here is interesting in terms of how people under that kind of stress interact with different personalities. There's more than just this at play but, even without it coming up in terms of words or actions, in the way Little and Jopson both speak and carry themselves it's obvious that one is a much stronger personality than the other, and someone in the mindset Crozier was in then is going to respond to that instinctively.

Also, while I do think rank and class were at play there - if Jopson was the type of person to tell Crozier anything he didn't want to hear just then I think he might have been on thinner ice than Blanky was, because Crozier's so used to him being a servant and perfectly obedient in everything. But Blanky did very much get away with pushing back a little bit, and Blanky is lower in rank and class than Crozier is too. According to Wikipedia historical-Little (and so probably his fictional counterpart) is a first lieutenant, which I assume (knowing nothing about any kind of military) makes him the man on the spot when the Captain wants to give a direct order, so that's probably a big part of why he becomes the target of Crozier's addiction-feeding at that point, but the show I think makes a good case that personality is a part of it as well.

The only thing that gets me is when people act like this is Crozier and Little's ENTIRE dynamic. Like with a lot of Crozier's early show behavior that often gets taken for his entire default personality this side of him came out in specific circumstances for specific reasons, and changing those circumstances changes Crozier's behavior and dynamic with the other characters, like Little. Crozier's not soulbonded besties with Little the way he is with Jopson, but when it comes down to it all these guys are just Adventure Coworkers who signed up to bunk together for a few years. His relationship with Jopson is weirder than his relationship with Little, which reads to me as a very normal one; when it comes down to it Crozier is ultimately just Little's boss (although interestingly the script does note I think at the promoting Jopson scene that at that point Little sees Crozier as an admirable person, so- a boss that Little maybe looks up to).

I'm not getting at anything, I just think it's all pretty interesting, the way the show handled this part of things, and I needed something fun to do.

edward i need you to walk a mile in the freezing cold to bring me more liquor. yes it is so cold you could literally die. chop chop. JOPSONNN YAY how are you my sweetiepie sparkle jumprope queen. i will never let anything happen to you. my perfect baby boy. EDWARD where the FUCK is my whiskey

[feyburner]

hello, i hope you're doing well, the world keeps getting crazier which means that i'm spending more time on fanfictions and i've been thinking about your jaytim fics. particularly, jason and how human he is when you write him. his awkwardness bc he was dead for a while and then doing. not very good. and how he probably has to catch up on simple stuff like who even taught him how to shave??? sure he learnt how to wire bombs but that didn't leave much time for stuff like sexuality and romance? just some experiences that he was robbed off. also very much interested in your take on jason's morality re: killing and what it means to him. anyways i'll dive back into my jason comic marathon <3

God yeah I think about this all the time, it's one of the things that interests me most about his character. Like how fucked up to die at 15 and wake up at like 18 and immediately launch yourself into your big crazy revenge plot that you think it's going to make you feel less howling animal inside but all it does is destroy your chances at ever having like, a normal interaction. By the time you calm down a little you've basically skipped from 15 to like 20. And everyone around you is also a freak who will never live a normal life and some have even also died but you're the only one missing a huge chunk out of your formative years. (Don't care about conflicting canon timelines or retcons.) (I also like this on a meta level bc it mirrors the fact that Jason was For Real Dead from 1988-2005.)

Re: morality, killing: A lot of his character is about catharsis to me. He is hotheaded and impulsive and direct and unsubtle (see: heads in a duffel bag) in a way the other Bats aren't. Who among us hasn't seen a news story and thought "I don't believe in state-sanctioned violence but damn, someone should kill that guy"? He is the guy who kills that guy. And sometimes it's for "noble" reasons and sometimes it isn't, and sometimes he might like to think it is but it isn't, and sometimes it immediately backfires and makes things worse for the people he is trying to help, and it can and has made him a hypocrite. It is also, I believe, an understandable stance for someone who was murdered as a child by a guy famous for essentially walking around wearing a T-shirt that says "I Love Hurting and Killing People (and I'm Definitely Going to Do It Again)." Bruce doesn't kill people because senseless violence made him an orphan. Jason kills people because senseless violence made him dead. Of course a child who lived and a child who died would look at death from opposite sides. It destroyed both of them at a formative age in opposite ways. Bruce crystallized around the after, and Jason around the before. I think it makes perfect sense that for the rest of their lives they would keep seeing only the after, and only the before, and in doing so keep looking past each other.

I feel like a lot of Jason meta is either "The Bats are so naive, Jason is the only realist" OR "Here's why Batman is right and Jason is an irredeemable monster" or whatever. Neither of those readings are compelling to me. I don't care which character is "right" or "good." If I wanted to read about good people making morally airtight choices I would go read Goofus and Gallant but only the Gallant parts and then kill myself. None of the Bats act in a way that aligns with my real-life morals. I think the "killing question" is most interesting viewed in the context of an individual character's relationship with violence and justice and atonement and forgiveness and consequences and least interesting in the context of pitting characters against each other to determine Who's Right and Who's Wrong.

I wrote the following exchange a while back as an exercise to explore this very topic.

Warning for CSA mention below the cut.

-

“I mean, hell, what if he got hit by a bus? Anyone can die, any time. Think of me as a big angry red bus.” Tim’s eyes on him feel like burning, but not so immediate as fire. More like the warning heat of sunburn: for now a faint prickling, for weeks after an ache. “End of the day? I don’t think he should be alive. I don’t think the state should get to decide who lives and who dies, but I’m not the state. And I know people can be rehabilitated. I know there’s a chance he could change, and never do it again, and spend the rest of his days saving kittens and helping little old ladies cross the street. But from what I’ve seen, this kinda guy, we’re talking a puny fucking chance. There’s people the system fails and people who could be helped by a better system and then there’s people who aren’t gonna fucking change. They’re just gonna keep doing awful shit, because it gets them off. Hurting kids. Hurting anyone they think is less powerful, or less of a person. Fuck that. The thing is, I know they’re people. And I’m a person too. And I don’t have the fucking right. To be the arbiter of fucked-up justice or whatever. But you know what? I can’t find it in me to give a shit. If those scumbags wanna kill me back, they can have at it, that’s their prerogative. Until then, some fuck rapes a five-year-old? No, fuck that. What if he does it again? He’s already done it. Hurt that kid forever. Snuffed out that thing inside them, whatever it is that makes kids think the world isn’t a shitshow. Can’t unring that fucking bell. Why should he—once was too many! Don’t you get it? That kinda guy—once was already too many! Why should he get to do it twice? And so fucking many of ‘em do it twice. Can’t keep your hands off a little kid? Fuck you. Headshot. Problem solved. You can’t change my mind about this, Red. I didn’t make the choice to kill people on a fucking whim. I thought about Hell and decided I’m up for it. Alright? Fuck off.” 

“You don’t have to convince me.” 

“And another thing—” His mouth clicks shut. “I—what?” 

“I said you don’t have to convince me.” Tim examines his glass, tilting the last swallow of watery gin back and forth. “If I were going to argue with you, I suppose I’d quote a statistic about how something like 93% of childhood sexual abuse is perpetuated from within the immediate family, and killing the abuser could drastically destabilize the child’s living situation and potentially place them at risk for other types of harm—”

“There’s nothing stable about—!”

“—but I’m not going to argue with you, because I don’t want to, because frankly I don’t care. I should—some days I’m better, and I do—but I don’t at the moment. Not tonight.” 

Jason stares at him for long enough that Tim grows visibly uncomfortable, shoulders stiffening. 

“What,” he says, eyes darting up to Jason’s, then away. His long fingers never stop playing with the glass, rolling it slowly, tracing the same wet circle on the tabletop. Jason wishes he would just finish his drink. And hold still. 

“You don’t care,” Jason repeats. “Great. Namaste. So what’s with the interrogation?”

“Interr—?” Tim looks startled. “Jason, I was asking.”

-

So yeah.

[asneakyfox]

so let's talk about david jenkins saying the idea was that the crew would dump ed overboard in the mutiny before the writers changed their minds and had him kept in the hold.

he says they changed this for pacing reasons, so that the reunion could happen in 2x03 instead of being delayed longer, and i cannot argue with that, waiting any longer sounds excruciating. so i'm not complaining about this as, like, villainous interference from the WBD suits or anything, although it might be a decision forced by cutting the number of episodes. probably still the right call under the circumstances. BUT i'm interested in it because this explains a couple things that are weird about the plot structure of the whole season as it stands.

so first of all the crew throwing the body overboard just immediately makes a lot more sense because it doesn't actually require them to have failed to notice he wasn't dead. it would be pretty tough to carry the body into the hold and lay him out and cover his face with a lil washcloth and everything and not notice at any point during this that he's still breathing or that he has a pulse. and if they did notice you'd think they'd either finish the job quickly or try to treat him if they'd had a change of heart, not leave him to die slow. however the idea that they would beat him till he stopped moving then immediately chuck the body overboard, that totally makes sense, you wouldn't stop to check if he was already dead or not because one way or another he will be pretty shortly after you dump him in the ocean.

second the line from stede to izzy about "you were the one who kept his body onboard" always bugged me because it feels like it's meant to establish something about izzy but it's really unclear WHAT it tells us about him, in a way that doesn't seem like intentional ambiguity: i've seen people interpret it as a sign of his devotion and i've seen others assume it was a practical decision that the crew should keep ed's body around to claim the bounty on blackbeard. (and i've seen both interpretations from people both in and out of the canyon, so it's not even a normal izcourse divide.) i actually wondered at one point if the purpose was to foreshadow where izzy's arc is going to end by establishing that he thinks it's more respectful to bury a pirate on land than at sea, although if that was the idea it sure didn't work on the people who'd care most.

however this new info from djenks explains it pretty neatly, which is that the reason for the line isn't to establish character stuff about izzy at all it's just there to awkwardly patch a plothole. it's that someone in the writers' room was like "but it doesn't make any sense, why WOULDN'T they dump his body overboard once they'd killed him" and somebody else was like "idk uh maybe we can put in a line about how izzy stopped them or something."

now more interestingly! this also would change something bigger about 2x04. because i'm guessing the idea here would be that ed would have actually for real washed up on an island that looks just like the one in the gravy basket and just never actually gotten up off the beach, and stede would find him there, mermaid scene, and ed would wake up mad and storm off into the woods with where he meets mary read with stede already trying to follow him and the rest of the episode proceeds as normal from there. (and probably buttons would be just, like, hanging around following stede, or maybe he was already acting as a psychopomp and led stede to ed's body, idk, lots of possible ways to play that.)

this means you completely lose the beat of the crew voting ed off the ship. you wouldn't lose the idea of the crew being pissed at him; you could still have the kitty collar onesie probation stuff after he got back. but this is a BIG change.

first of all it solves a big obvious problem LOTS of people pointed out immediately when the episode aired which is that it makes no sense that stede would just stay on the ship after letting ed be exiled. reuniting with ed has been his driving goal for months and it's not even like ed has definitively told him to fuck off, he's just stomping off angry and incoherent and not even clearly in his right mind. but they couldn't let stede actually follow ed on his own initiative immediately, because it would undermine the later fisherman breakup if stede has already established that he's willing to leave his pirate career behind if that's what it takes to be with ed. so you end up with this awkward beat where he's just kind of passively standing there until buttons tells him what to do.

i think there's something even more important it does though! one criticism a LOT of people had about s2 was feeling like the crew all hated ed now and there was no clear sign they'd forgiven him by the end, and also some people had the impression that stede had just overriden the crew's decision (even though he does say he's going to ask their permission; it DOES feel weird we don't see that). now i've said before that i think there was probably going to be a reconciliation between ed & lucius, and by extension the crew as a whole, in the lupete wedding verision of 2x06, and i still think that. but regardless of whether i'm right or wrong about that. even without a reconciliation, this would seem like WAY less of a problem if the crew hadn't voted ed of the ship.

as it is, we have THREE scenes devoted to the idea that the crew as a whole (not just lucius & izzy, who both have more complicated individual relationships with ed) are uncomfortable with ed's presence on the ship - there's the initial one where stede's holding the meat on his face where they're all yelling at him, and then there's the actual walk of shame where they've just voted him off, and THEN there's the youtube apology scene where they're heckling him and stuff. and having three separate scenes like that makes it feel like the narrative is really hammering in this idea of a big dramatic rupture in the whole crew's relationship with ed. but only the last of those scenes was originally supposed to be there! the first two were just thrown into the plot to justify why ed ends up wandering around an island to run into anne & mary! if you only had the youtube apology scene, it would be much more clear that most of the crew weren't really all that mad - as it is, roach and jim explicitly saying they aren't mad feels like it's overshadowed by the weight of the earlier scenes.

(also a minor issue, but i've mentioned before that surprisingly often people think the vote was unanimous. this doesn't actually make sense in terms of the episode, because we know it was deadlocked and izzy cast the tiebreaker. but it is sort of weird, if the idea is that the crew is split on this, that we never get any sign of who voted which way; there's nobody but stede who is clearly presented as specifically not wanting ed to be exiled. which DOES end up making it feel like it's the crew as a unanimous block that wants him off the ship. but that makes sense if the whole concept of the crew wanting him exiled was sort of hastily written to patch a plot hole instead of being a fully developed idea.)

anyway. like i said i can't really complain about this as a pacing decision. but it is really interesting to me how many knock-on problems with the whole arc of the season were created by the change, and how much cleaner the original idea sounds like it would have been.

[saintsenara]

Hi, do you have an analysis for why you prefer bottom Tom? Most fics have him as a top, but I'm very interested in your perspective ma'am.

well, the short answer is because i want to and because i can.

the longer answer is that i just don't find any of the arguments for why voldemort would never bottom under any circumstances to be as convincing and definitive as their proponents claim them to be.

my issue - to be clear - isn't with people having a preference for reading or writing about him being a top. it's with the fact that him only being a top - and not only that, but him being repulsed or humiliated by the idea of bottoming - is typically presented as such an objective fact that preferring to read or write about him being a bottom provokes responses which range from the simply annoying - "this is out of character!" [any fic in which he consensually shags his prophesied child-enemy is out of character, be serious] - to the genuinely troubling - "it's disgusting! voldemort is a real man and real men don't want anything up their arses!".

obviously - let's be real - a lot of the arguments about why bottom!voldemort is impossible are just typical "slash fandom reinvents gender roles" shit - they essentially boil down to "omg no harry would bottom because he's the girl".

but others do come with more weight behind them. and two of these are:

that the gender norms voldemort was raised with would inculcate in him a big lump of internalised homophobia which would make him see bottoming as feminine, and - in seeing it as feminine - see it as weak, humiliating, dependent, and incompatible with his understanding of control and power. that voldemort would be horrified by the idea of being penetrated, because he would see it as something which polluted or profaned the body he considers to be sacred.

i do think it's possible to argue both of these points robustly, using actual readings of the text rather than just vibes. i've just never found any of these readings compelling.

and the reason why all comes down to this:

"I knew I was different," he whispered to his own quivering fingers. "I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something." [HBP 13]

he's talking about something specific - how he's always known that he's a wizard - here, of course. but we can also take this statement and use it to think more generally about how he views being perceived as deviant, strange, or wrong by the norms of the society in which he lives.

by which i mean... he's somebody who believes that being different makes him special and that people who try to punish or shame him for his difference are idiots who simply haven't yet worked out that he's superior to them in literally everything he does. he's not someone who perceives being different in a self-flagellating way - he doesn't think there's something wrong with him, he doesn't think that his difference makes him a pathetic or unimpressive person. and he's also not somebody who views being criticised or punished for his difference as something which causes him sorrow or anxiety. it causes him rage - because it inconveniences him [it creates obstacles he has to overcome, although he entirely believes he can overcome them] and because it doesn't recognise his self-conception as the protagonist of reality:

Riddle's reaction to this was most surprising. He leapt from the bed and backed away from Dumbledore, looking furious. "You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course - well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!"   "I am not from the asylum," said Dumbledore patiently. "I am a teacher and, if you will sit down calmly, I shall tell you about Hogwarts. Of course, if you would rather not come to the school, nobody will force you -" "I'd like to see them try," sneered Riddle. "Hogwarts," Dumbledore went on, as though he had not heard Riddle's last words, "is a school for people with special abilities -"   "I'm not mad!" [HBP 13]

you can entertain a very dark reading of this scene - in fact, i have - but it's also possible to entertain a liberating one, and see the child voldemort as someone who has always been proud of his difference and prepared to defend that pride in the face of censure, and who is absolutely delighted to be given the language to define and describe his difference and to be given access to a community of people who are similarly - in his words - special.

all of which is to say... the standard interpretation in fandom seems to be that a queer voldemort would fall somewhere on a spectrum from indifferent to his sexuality to actively ashamed of it.

but i think it's much, much more plausible that he'd actually be proud of it, and for his statement - "i knew i was different... i knew i was special" - to be used as the starting point for how we might imagine him realising that he's queer.

and this is why the "he'd have so much internalised homophobia he'd never bottom" argument always falls flat for me - it rests on an assumption that queer men having to grow past a childhood/teenage fear that there's something wrong with them is the default position. it overlooks the fact that there are many ways for somebody to come to understand their own sexuality.

and that two of those ways are "defiantly" and "spitefully". aka the lord voldemort special.

something which always stands out to me about the canonical voldemort, both when he's a good-looking teenager/young man and a monstrous, serpentine adult, is that - even with all the phallic symbolism which surrounds him [enormous snakes and ultra-powerful wands and so on] - the text presents him as somebody who comes across as fairly effeminate:

he's typically described - as we can see from this excellent analysis from @said-snape-softly - as speaking "softly" or "quietly". when he isn't, he's often "shrill", "shrieking", "screeching", or "screaming".

he has a hair-trigger temper and he's extremely emotionally volatile.

he's typically described as moving in ways which have similarly feminine connotations - he "drifts" and "glides". while the primary doylist reason for this is clearly so the reader associates him with snakes, ghosts, and dementors, it ends up giving him a quality of movement which is fey, rather than powerful and purposeful. indeed, we only ever see him do one thing which requires physical, as well as magical, prowess - duelling. but, like fencing - which is its real-world equivalent - good duellists aren't people who are physically strong or imposing, they're people who are cunning and nimble [and the other men the text emphasises are good at it are snape, flitwick, and harry - with harry's quick reflexes being explicitly given as a reason why [i.e. GoF 34] ]. his ability to fly is a demonstration of his magical power alone, since it allows him to circumvent the need to use a broom, which does appear to require physical strength [hence why the only main characters who aren't fond of using brooms are either women or fat, cowardly little boys like neville...]

building on this, he's often described in ways which make him sound quite physically fragile - he's very thin, he's very pale, he's always cold, every time his heartbeat is described it seems to be irregular and so on.

his reputation in his teens and young adulthood is as a "polite [and] quiet" goody-two-shoes who "showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all" [HBP 17]. i think that point about aggression is really important - it builds on what mrs cole tells dumbledore about it being "very hard to catch him" bullying other orphans [HBP 13]. he's not dudley - or james and sirius - using his physical talents to subdue and control people. he's sneakier... more insidious... indeed, in chamber of secrets, ron explicitly compares him to percy - somebody else the text presents as fairly effete - in order to complain about him "squealing" - aka, running to tell a teacher, like a girl, instead of settling things like a man - on hagrid [CoS 14].

when he's a young man, living alone for the first time, the text thinks it's very important to tell us that he has "slightly longer hair" than he does at school [HBP 20]. "slightly" is obviously the operative word here - i don't think he's strutting into hepzibah smith's house in a twenty-four inch lace-front - but we can certainly imagine him with the sort of greaser or pompadour haircut which was understood in the 1950s as being a bit counter-cultural...

of the five horcruxes which are objects - rather than harry and nagini [who is, of course, female] - three [cup, diadem, locket] originally belonged to a woman and are acquired from a woman, two [cup, locket] are acquired by killing a woman using a stereotypically female murder method [poison], two are connected to voldemort's rage at his mother being disparaged [locket - he's furious to hear hepzibah say that merope must have stolen it, ring - he attacks morfin immediately after morfin calls his mother a "slut"]. and all five of these horcruxes also depend on women to introduce them into the narrative in a way that facilitates their destruction: the diary is given to ginny; dumbledore puts on the ring in order to speak to his sister; the locket is associated both with walburga's grief [it's literally moved from the cave - voldemort's grave for his mother - to the house which is walburga's own tomb!] and with umbridge's performance of femininity; the cup is given to bellatrix [and the text is very clear that both she and voldemort understand it as having only been given to her, rather than to her and rodolphus] and is then destroyed - albeit off-stage - by hermione; and harry is given the tools to acquire the diadem by cho, luna, and mcgonagall, although he has to overcome the obstacles of alecto carrow and helena ravenclaw to get hold of it. harry - of course - also only becomes a horcrux because of a woman - lily's - sacrifice.

his favourite death eaters are a woman and a very feminine-coded man. but - more interestingly - what the text finds unimpressive isn't that he likes bellatrix and snape... it's that he leaves a lot of his dirty work to male minions who are characterised by their brutish strength - people like greyback, hagrid [who he makes carry harry up to hogwarts], rowle, gibbon, amycus carrow and so on. there's the heavy implication in the text that voldemort's preference for leaving the violence to others - as i'm always pointing out, his canonical kill count is really low; most of the murders in the series are done by other death eaters acting on his orders - is something we should see as weak.

the text associates him with this effeminacy - i think it's really important to note, given who jkr is - as a criticism. it's something - much like the text's presentation of him as aromantic, and the fact that the degradation of his looks via the creation of the horcruxes makes him look sexless/eunuch-like - being used to underscore his villainy. he's feminine-coded in a toxic way.

but let's take this in another direction [and let's also return to the actual question you asked me...] and read him as someone who has always had to deal with being perceived as queer by other people, and having that perception be associated with negative assumptions.

he's very easy to imagine as a child/teenager who's the target of ridicule from his fellow orphans/fellow students [for not being sporty, for liking to sit in the library for hours on end coming up with anagrams of his own name, for the way he walks and speaks] which hinges on the idea that his failure to conform to the expected conventions of "proper" masculinity mean that he's not a proper man... and that if he's not a proper man then... he's not straight.

but then we have to come back to the "i knew i was special" point, don't we?

voldemort's belief in his own superiority can - in my view - be used to read him as somebody who would embrace being camp or effeminate or whatever term we want to use, in order both to express his contempt for people who criticise him ["think i'm a messed up little deviant, do you, mrs cole? well, you don't know the half of it!"] and who conform to social norms he thinks are reprehensible ["oh, do purebloods frown upon bottoming, abraxas? well - guess what - so do muggles. do you agree with what muggles think?"] and to humiliate, subjugate, and control them ["you think i'm a faggot, do you...? well, you're right... i'm a faggot who's defeated you in battle and now i'm about to kill you... still feel like a man?"].

while - obviously - appearance/gender presentation has nothing to do with preferred sexual roles - the manliest men on earth can be bottoms! being femme doesn't prevent you topping! - i really do think that voldemort is someone who can be written entirely canon-coherently as thinking that the homophobic perception of bottoming as weak, powerless, or humiliating is complete nonsense, and who would actively flaunt his rejection of this perception as a way to mock people who subscribe to it.

after all, we see him do something similar in canon when it comes to his blood-status and social class. the death eaters - lots of whom are posh pureblood men who conceive of themselves as the most important people in the universe - are made to kneel at the feet of and kiss the robes of and be branded like cattle by and be at the beck and call of someone who's neither pureblood nor posh. there are - as lupin tells us - no wizarding princes... and yet the closest things the wizarding world has to an aristocracy are rolling around on the ground debasing themselves and calling a half-blood orphan "my lord".

voldemort does this to humiliate them. but he also does this to amuse himself - à la logan roy making men who've displeased him play "boar on the floor".

[wormtail being forced to care for him when he's in his half-form at the start of goblet of fire, for example. he's not humiliated in the slightest by his dependence on wormtail... wormtail is humiliated by it, and voldemort finds it hilarious.]

and so i think we can plausibly imagine him also deeply enjoying making his straight, married, "i would die before i let anything near my arse", "i'm not getting changed for quidditch with so-and-so there, he's queer", "i'd disown my son if i found out he let other men fuck him" death eaters grovel for the favour of someone who loves getting railed...

this deeply aligns with how voldemort understands things like power and control - and it's why the argument that he'd only top because he would regard it as the only way of being powerful and controlling never hits for me.

because this also rests on an assumption - that the bottom always understands themselves as the passive partner. i do think the fandom is broadly getting better at recognising that bottoms and submissives are different things [although the bar was on the floor...], but i think there's still a tendency to default to the idea that the two people involved in sex are an active partner and a passive partner, and that the passive partner is - for want of a better term - the receptacle.

the language used around bottoming reinforces this assumption. its voice is passive - the bottom is penetrated, is bred, is fucked, is taken - its verbs are passive too - the top does, the bottom receives.

but the thing is... this is just semantics. and it's a semantic argument directly rooted in misogyny, and the homophobia which stems from and connects to it.

and - since it's just semantics - we can change the language we use at any time to completely reconfigure the assumed power dynamic.

the bottom grants access. the bottom consumes. the bottom takes. the bottom absorbs. the bottom uses. the bottom captures. the bottom detains. the bottom grips. the bottom devours. the bottom permits. the bottom destroys.

the top is the person who's passive - who receives permission, who is granted access, who is consumed, who is absorbed, who is captured. the top is the person having their life-force leached from them. they're just a toy, just a piece of meat. they literally don't matter.

and the text already uses this sort of language - the language of consumption and capture and permission to cross thresholds and so on - to talk about voldemort's attitude to power, magic, and the body.

he drains the blood of unicorns; he uses up the life-force of the people and animals he possesses; he grows stronger by consuming ginny's secrets; he is restored to his body by taking from his father, wormtail, and harry; he takes the money dumbledore offers without feeling the need to thank him or regard it as a gift; he offers up gifts to people he wants to use for his own gain; he "doesn't march up to people's houses and bang on their front doors" [OotP 6]; he hoards and conceals precious things; his soul is kept safe by being encased by the horcruxes; his locket is guarded by something which has to be drunk, which destroys anyone who assumes they can simply take it without his permission; he "would be glad to see anything miss hepzibah shows me" [HBP 20] and then seizes her secrets and uses them to bring about her doom; his descent from slytherin is proven by his control of the threshold of the chamber of secrets; he places himself and his talents at dumbledore's disposal, "i am yours to command" [HBP 20]; he controls snakes and they do his bidding; he drains the ministry of its secrets; he controls the dementors, who devour joy; augustus rookwood "has lord voldemort's gratitude... i shall need all the information you can give me" [OotP 26]; he is the greatest legilimens - that is to say, he is excellent at pulling other people's secrets into his own mind and using them as he wishes - the world has ever seen; he has seen ron's heart and it is his; his followers live to serve him...

his followers are called death eaters, not death fuckers.

and so it's inarguable, really, that he'd have a legion of service tops under his command...

[true-blue-sonic]

Thanks for the tag!❤️

Silver! There's not a single thing about him that I don't love <3 I think he's got a great and interesting personality, an absolutely wondrous design, and I love the concept of psychic powers in general too. It's no surprise I gravitated towards him as hard as I did back in 2014!

Sonic himself! A real inspiration and a very remarkable, multifaceted character who's just incredibly effortlessly cool. I see anything related to him, and I become happy <3

Espio, for being a cool ninja who's also got a fun personality. He meshes very well with the rest of the Chaotix, and also for him I think he's got a really neat design!

Blaze!! My OG favourite character; she was my number 1 for a bit before it become Silver, haha. I think Sonic Rush has one of the best stories of any Sonic game out there, in part because of Blaze and the development she goes through. Also here: great personality and great appearance!

Infinite: my favourite villain. I wish that one day we'll get a game wherein he plays a central role again; I feel like there is so much more they can do with him still! Also he's got a great design, and a very neat voice actor on top ^-^

Tails, for being a floofy li'l guy who's also tremendously smart. I think that there could not have been a better foil for Sonic than what Tails is.

Eggman Nega! Perhaps a bold pick, but he intrigues me deeply as a villain XD I love the juxtaposition between him hating Eggman's guts for being a blemish on the Robotnik bloodline, while simultaneously blatantly using some of Eggman's greatest creations and just editing them a bit for his own gain. I pity him, truly.

Shadow: I think he's got a really intriguing and sobering backstory to his name, and I greatly enjoyed him in SxSG.

Amy <3 She's cute and always peppy and upbeat, and a well-written Amy is definitely a joy to look at!

Gold the Tenrec from the Archie comics: it's such a shame that we only got one story with her, because I would have loved to see more of it. Her design is amazingly done, imo!

Let's see, I'll tag... @xxlea-nardoxx, @icycm24, @stillafanofsonic, @one-half-guy, @hfevra, and anyone else who'd like to do it!🍀

Alright everypony, here's my top 10 favorite Sonic characters

Shadow

Rouge

Amy

Silver

Metal Sonic

Sonic

Eggman

Wave

Blaze

Knuckles

[artemisia-black]

Sorry if you've answered this before (im sure you have) but do you think Sirius was a serial dater at school? How do you hc Sirius at school?

I think my over exposure (early in my fandom life) to school shagger/ sex pest Sirius made me really dislike the trope that he dated loads. But also in my analysis of his character, he’s pretty selective about who he spends time with. He’s way more polite than he’s often depicted as, but he also doesn’t suffer fools lightly- so I can’t see him tolerating dating people for the sake of it. I can see him going out on a few dates (with people who he deems clever or interesting) but his friendships would’ve always taken priority over any kind of romantic life.

I do think he was probably widely fancied, but given that Bellatrix literally tries to “trim the family tree” when Tonks marries Remus, I imagine there was a real danger in who he dated. He was related to active Death Eaters, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if he publicly got involved with the wrong person in their eyes, they’d consider an honour killing (for want of a better term) and that would probably make him even more reluctant to date seriously.

At school, I think overall, he was just one of those people who’s effortlessly good at everything, and I do wonder how much jealousy that stirred. Because when someone is that good-looking, people tend to react in one of two extreme ways, either they’re deferential to the point of fawning, or they absolutely hate you. You become an object of projection (Good looks can be as much of a curse as they are a gift).

If you actually asked people for personal stories about going to school with him, most wouldn’t have much beyond, distant politeness or “oh yeah, I saw him break someones nose once.” Because I do think he got into fights. He’s a very physical fighter even in the Ministry battle (literally shoulder slams Dolohov) so I can absolutely see him getting into fist fights especially around the time he leaves his family. And on top of all that, I really don’t see him enjoying being part of the school rumour mill

I know Remus calls him and James “the height of cool,” but these are the same people who had stupid nicknames for each other and spent years as amateur cartographers. Sirius was thought of as cool because he was hot ( I said what I said) because this is a guy who remixed A Christmas Carol and willingly called himself Snuffles, he absolutely had a ridiculous side, we just don’t get to see it because by the time we meet him, he’s been so prison-hardened.

Also he clearly cared about his grades. He expected at least an Outstanding (which is the top grade- was he expecting them to make a new one for him?) and the fact that McGonagall still calls him brilliant when she thinks he’s a mass murderer says a lot. She has no time for people who slack off, so he must have been a good student. I don’t think he was a class clown or a class disrupter-he would never perform for people.

[for-a-longlongtime]

Hey Anon, I saw your message this morning! 💜

You pointed out "Yall need to be careful of bi erasure" and linked to a post someone made about me. I appreciate the heads up! To be honest, I’m not concerned about people suggesting that I’m doing bi erasure. Whether it’s regarding Pedro characters in canon, head canons, or bisexuality in any other way. But hey, everybody can have their opinion about things, including what they think about me.

I dont talk much about myself here, but my tumblr bio has said from day 1 that I’m a bi woman. My master list mentions most of my fic “is queer (m/m, bi4bi, m/m/f, non-binary and trans characters)”. Folks who have read my fic know I've written pairings where every character is explicitly bi ( Frankie x f!reader x Santi; Peña x Rockford x OFC; Ezra x f!reader x Benny Miller, and WIPs with Joel and Marcus M, Frankie x f!reader x OFC and Maximus x Acacius x Lucilla).

Can bisexual people still do bi erasure? Sure!

Do I worry whether straight folks or other random folks online think I'm involved in bi erasure? Nahhh.

Anyway, I did make some posts the other day based on anons submitted to me about issues re: queer representation in this fandom. Let me just direct you to the several posts I made on that day, which started in response to a question about Renaldo:

"Was Renaldo Gay in the SNL sketch?? I've seen a lot of blogs saying he wasn't?". TL;DR version of my response: the ending of the song states "word to the wise, if you've got wives, hide them from the three bros!" suggesting that Renaldo, Domingo, and Santiago all hook up with women/wives. Considering Renaldo hooked up with Matthew, that probably makes him bisexual (and not the fact that he had Sophie, aka Sabrina's character, dancing up on him) - or queer, or someone who doesn't like to label himself. However, while 'hide your wives' works linguistically as a great punch line to wrap up the song, it does not refer to Renaldo's affair with Matthew (now that is bi erasure, if you wanna be exact), so I did point out that 'hide your spouses' would've been more accurate - but understandably, that's not as catchy. I'm currently writing a Renaldo x Matthew one shot, and I said my headcanon has Renaldo as gay - but that's my interpretation/hc/fic.

Someone wrote to me: Some blogs in the fandom is hellbent on taking away any attention away from anything mlm based with his characters anyway so it wouldn't matter in Renaldo was gay - someone would find a loophole to make him like women. TL;DR I agreed, because there are people who definitely do that. It became part of a longer thread of reblogs with some other folks in which we talked about how Pedro's mlm (men loving men) characters, such as Oberyn, Dieter and Silva in particular, either tend to be canonized primarily as bisexual by people but in fic are almost always paired with women (f!reader or OFCs). Which is fine, but people are definitely interested in seeing more m/m representation for those characters. Someone also brought up that when Pedro characters are paired with non-binary reader inserts or OC, it tends to be mostly afab!nb (or afab!trans characters), and that they were surprised that there weren't more amab!nb characters - that's a great point too.

I made a post with an anon message that pointed out "MLM includes bi, pan and queer men. They might like women. (And/or other genders, but they still like men)". Very correct!

Finally, there was an excellent long message from an anon saying "We need more representation of bi people in same-gender relationships represented" and that even in threesomes or throuples (fic) that include two men, there should ideally be more mlm representation. Once again, I fully agree. Everybody should write whatever they want, but I do often see threesomes that are listed as Pedro Character 1 x reader x Pedro Character 2, but in the fic it's more like reader having sex with two straight men at the same time while they're trying to not cross swords, rather than mlm being represented. THIS IS DEFINITELY CHANGING THOUGH: it's wonderful to see a big increase of mlm characters in threesomes/throuple fics over the past year!

So here is my main issue with a lot of people who are raging about 'bi erasure', and why I've made several posts about queerness within this fandom (not just recently, but from the start). Of course bisexual people exist (hello, it me, for one). Pull up some statistics if you want: there are a lot more folks who identify as bisexual than there are folks who identify as gay or lesbian. I'm an older millenial, so if you wanna talk about bi erasure: the measure in which it happens today is nothing compared to the bi erasure and deeply engrained homophobia we experienced in our teens and twenties from society at large. However:

🏳‍🌈 In your rush to point out bisexuals exist, you're shutting down a much broader dialogue with people within the LGBTQIA+ community. 🏳‍🌈

Because have you noticed how gay men, nonbinary/genderqueer fans, amab!trans or amab!nonbinary FANS (not fic characters; I'm talking actual people) are extremely underrepresented in this fandom? In addition to in fic? And that these fans won't have their fiction or actual posts shared all that much? Or that when they carefully speak up, e.g. about being happy to see Pedro portray Silva as a gay character, they're immediately rebuffed and called biphobic or that they're trying to erasure bisexuality?

Yeah. That part.

It's messed up.

Nobody is even making demands. Nobody is even saying "what writers are doing is wrong". They're just saying, "This is a bummer". And some of us are pointing out that mlm Pedro characters in m/m pairings are hard to come by, which is too bad because it's not only us queers who read m/m Pedro character pairings - there are lots of straight fans out there who have indicated they like reading that, too.

Are you gonna call that bi erasure? Or marginalization of women? Or anything really except for what it actually is? Fans are just saying "yknow, I wish there were more fans/fic characters/bodies in fic represented in this fandom that look and feel more like me". People seem to have finally understood that in varying degrees when this applies to body type or racial/cultural background (which took many white people a lot longer to fully grasp; BIPOC folks have been saying this for such a long time already) - it's about diversity and wanting to feel included. But when gay or transfolks say this about mlm, a whole bunch of y'all are crying bi erasure?

In short (and I can't believe I need to even fuckin' say this):

The Pedro fandom or its fic does NOT belong exclusively to women.

It does not belong to cis folks, to straight people, or any other particular group of people.

Aren't we all just trying to be a community? Then stop acting like people reading Silva or Renaldo (or any other character) as gay are erasing bisexuality - that's not the case or the damn point.

And anon-- my critique truly isn't directed at you, I'm not dragging you in any way. You took the effort to bring something to my attention, plus you clearly care about people, and I appreciate that a lot. But there are tons of people who don't dare to speak up about this in public settings, so I can't help but take this opportunity to not only clarify what I said earlier -- but also to address the bigger problem at large. Read or write all the gossip blogs you want, by all means, but maybe also consider using that time to actually connect with people.

[lozeyart]

What am I doing in the year of our lord 2025 drawing Junjou Romantica fanart

Goodness me, I got into JJR back in 2008 when the anime aired and then I got into the manga that same year. At the time, I wasn't really drawing people, I was drawing animals, but I was OBSESSED with this yaoi with my whole heart and wanted so badly to draw fanart for it. So now here it is! 17 years in the making! Btw, trying to interpret anime hair logic with my style is easier said than done, but I did my best lol. All just colored sketches and then some scribbles for funsies.

But I definitely have some complicated feelings about this manga/anime. More below the cut (its A LOT, I'm so sorry).

JJR was one of the first yaois I ever got into, and back in 2008 when I didn't realize being gay was an option, this silly little manga/anime felt like an escape for me. Well, it's now 17 years later and upon rereading this manga (I still have volume 1-12, I could never get rid of them, they mean to much to me) I realize that it has aged POORLY.

This yaoi is definitely a product of its time (2002/2003) and it SHOWS. I find myself disappointed in the dynamic between Usagi-san and Misaki and wish that Misaki would show Usagi-san SOME sort of affection outside of the bare minimum (cooking and cleaning for Usagi) and Usagi definitely has some... Issues of his own. Now, I'm an adult, and I can see that consensual non-consent (CNC) can be fun and exciting for a couple (you know, if agreed upon beforehand), and it can be fun for your partner to initiate things out of the blue, but Usagi definitely toes the line of what that is. Now, I know that this was the early 2000s and yaoi relationships tended to have that dynamic (One being the seme who didn't listen to "no" and the uke who said "no" constantly but actually secretly liked what was happening), like I said, this series is definitely a product of its time. But I don't know man, its not fun (for me) reading sex scenes where one of them is constantly telling the other one to stop over and over again. (I also think it'd be cute as fuck if Usagi-san asked Misaki if he could kiss him and Misaki shyly said yes instead of yelling at him like he always does).

I even went online to read up to volume 27, but all I can express is that same disappointment. Misaki rarely even likes to acknowledge that he's in love with Usagi-san, or is dating the man, or even likes him (it seems to be only under duress that he admits these things STILL. IN 2022 when that volume was released!)

I wish there had been more character development in the years since I stopped reading the manga, I wish we could see Misaki and Usagi-san acting like they actually like each other outside of when they have sex (yes there are small moments between the two, and a bickering couple can be a fun dynamic, but dear lord lets shake things up A LITTLE. I'M BEGGING).

Lets not even get started on the sketchyness that is (at the start of the manga) a 28 year old falling in love with an 18 year old (And we're not even going to TALK about Miyagi and Shinobu) -don't bring up the age of consent in Japan, I do NOT wanna hear it-.

Listen, I'm 29, and I would NEVER even DREAM about dating an 18 year old (or 19 year old) at my age. (Fuck, the youngest I'll date is MAYBE 23 but even THATS pushing it for me).

All of that to say is that I still can't help but have an extreme soft spot for this series, and there are still moments that I love from this (Volume 9, the Christmas chapter, am I right? Gets me EVERY time), and fuck, Shungiku Nakamura is probably still making bank with this series so who the fuck am I to say anything lol. I'm just a rando online with an opinion, you don't have to agree, and you can think that whatever Misaki and Usagi have is fuckin' AWESOME. I'm just an old fart

But, I dunno, I think it'd be interesting to explore Misaki's internalized homophobia, and Misaki slowly but surely growing more and more comfortable with not only accepting Usagi-san's affections and even reciprocating and initiating on his own, but also accepting HIMSELF and being happy with who he is instead of the constant self shame he puts himself through for being with a man. Let's be so real, he is gay, he can't stop looking at other attractive men and FAWNING over how hot they are (Nowaki, Todo, Injuin Sensei, the list goes on).

But who am I to complain, I went and drew fanart of these two anyway. Rock, meet glass house.

Unrelated, I love the art style in volume 3-6 a lot because its very "late 90s early 2000s" art and I think the art peaked in volume 9. And now its unpeaking. Bring back Usagi-san's yaoi chin so help me god.

I do have yaoi I prefer over this one a lot more, and involve older couples (which I find that I prefer), and have fun, cute stories. If anyone has read this far and wants those recs, lemme know (dear god I'm so sorry, this has gone on so long.)

Anyway I do want to redraw some of the sex scenes and post it to my bluesky.

[inolienkiki]

I saw this video and was laughing hysterically the whole time.

To summarize:

1) video maker arbitrarily decided that the in-game, canon description of geo as “fossilised shells” was wrong for some reason. Justification for this: “there’s no way it’s just sitting on the walls like that.”

2) video maker comes to the executive decision that since the devs are obviously lying about what geo is made of in the game’s impartial description text, they have instead hidden the clues to its true nature in the secrets of how high it bounces.

(This is immediately obviously stupid because we see lots of stuff bounce in the game, particularly items. As far as I know, a Hallownest Seal doesn’t bounce any differently from one of Tuk’s eggs. Does this mean Seals are made of eggs? Oooo… I found a secret… discuss in the replies…)

3) video maker spends at least five minutes attempting to standardize a distance scale for Hallownest, via the following steps:

(3a) video maker digs up a kickstarter update from 8 years ago stating that Hornet can use her needle from 30 yards away. This isn’t a maximum, nor does it provide any further details.

(3b) video maker decides that 30 yards is therefore the distance from the entrance to the black egg temple to its inner chamber.

(3c) video maker uses this information to calculate the heights of various relevant objects in Hallownest.

I will take a moment to list all the things wrong with this insane string of deductions, in reverse order: the distance from the entrance to inner chamber of the black egg temple is not necessarily the size it appears, since there could be extra space between the rooms, as you, Mebi, should know better than anyone; we don’t know that Hornet was standing at the entrance, and actually we have no idea where she was standing; similarly, the Hollow Knight can scream and trigger this event from either end of its arena, so the distance is inconsistent; even if we could get a distance out of this, we’d have no way to relate it to the thirty yards number, since neither the black egg distance nor the number give us any information about Hornet’s actual maximum range; there’s no reasonable explanation why these insect characters would have the same units of measurement as people, so we don’t have any way of knowing the conversion between Bug Yards and meters; AND, MOST STUPIDLY, “SHE’LL CUT YOU DOWN FROM THIRTY YARDS” IS OBVIOUSLY A FIGURE OF SPEECH.

Pissed yet? It’s about to get worse.

4) video maker reveals the formula which all this work has been done to evaluate. The formula for coefficient of restitution is based on a ratio of heights. Video maker confidently says “we’ll use meters, since that’s what the formula calls for”, despite the fact that units don’t matter. It’s a ratio. Video maker could have skipped the entire middle part of the video and calculated the restitution coefficient using units of pixels. The whole thing was completely pointless.

5) no, video maker is not done yet. Video maker looks up some restitution coefficients and notices that the one for steel about lines up. Video maker concludes that geo is made of steel. Video maker then has the deranged audacity to laugh about how ridiculous it is to consider that geo could be valuable, based on one particular pricing online for an individually packaged ball bearing.

It’s the funniest Hollow Knight-themed physics shitpost I’ve ever seen.

Because this person lost their ball bearings in the process of asking an actually interesting question, I’ll also take a sec to talk about geo.

First off, it’s worth noting that “shell” has multiple specific and distinct meanings in Hallownest. It’s used as a general term for “body” in the exoskeleton sense. It’s also used as a term for certain shields. Note that many of the shield-carrying enemies are described as defending themselves with nail and shell, but Tiso’s visually distinct shield is also called a shell, which indicates to me that it’s more in reference to a type of object than a material. There’s also shell*wood*, what Zote’s nail is made of, which is probably something analogous to “sugarcane” in terms of naming convention. I’d bet shellwood is often used to make shells. (I don’t know where this wood is coming from, given we only have Root and Moss/Leaf-type plants, but areas like the Ancestral Mound and parts of Crystal Peak have pretty obviously wooden supports. I swear shellwood is mentioned somewhere else, too, but I can’t remember off the top of my head.) If we’re stretching even further, “shell binding” in the pantheons is about your masks, and we can see Mask Maker making things out of wood. (That one’s a stretch).

Anyway, shell != dead bug. Shell != made from dead bug. (!= is not equals in Python. I just did a pset, cut me some slack.)

Furthermore, lots of fossilized shells != genocide a long time ago (even though there were multiple; Hallownest’s stasis seems to suspend some natural processes, but not others, so they could very well have fossilized), and money in the walls != that money disappearing, since the only enemies that want it can’t seem to open their own chests.

Furthermore, we can infer that geo is valuable not just for being made of shells, given all the giant piles of dead bugs and shields dropped by enemies that are apparently worthless. Geo has a distinctive glint, which presumably comes from whatever material has replaced the more degradable shells in the fossilisation process. What is this material? Well, I don’t know, but here are some things we can say about it:

-It seems to be universally considered valuable. Characters from outside Hallownest, like Divine, Cornifer, and Iselda, understand it as a currency just as well as the age-old stag station tolls. So this material is presumably of some inherent value.

-Geo is fossilised in spots all across the map, and fossilised differently. It shows up in the crystals of Crystal Peak, the mushrooms of the Fungal Wastes, and in what appear to be eggs in Deepnest. From this, we can see that not only is the geo material present across Hallownest, but it’s present within crystals and living things.

-Finally, the big geo deposit in Kingdom’s Edge looks a lot like a Pale Ore deposit.

I don’t want to go too far, but it seems like maybe Geo has something to do with higher beings. Like Pale Ore, I can’t pin down the relationship, but something is going on there. Geo isn’t like gold, only valuable because it’s rare and pretty— to finally, for once in this very long post, agree with video maker, it obviously isn’t rare. I think there must be some inherent power to it that the Knight never actually bothers to find out.

If you’re sick of my sensible, rational suppositions and want a crackpot Game Theory, here you go: Divine and Leg Eater are both greedy. If you don’t have enough geo for them, they say, “why?” Leg Eater believes, as you can see in his dream nail dialogue, that if he gets enough geo he’ll become “a king”. In a land that’s only ever had one King, he says not “(like) the King”, but “a king”. I think he thinks it’ll make him a higher being. Divine, who travels with an actual higher being and might have a better idea about this, asks for an absurdly exorbitant amount. They wanna be gods.

Props Mebi. Love the maps. I know we’re all going crazy over the game that I dare not name, but it’s good to see someone else pointing out when this insanity starts going stupid.

Also, sorry for not capitalizing geo in this post. I was eating an entire plate of banh hoi and that was my priority.

For no reason in particular, reminder that:

- Most of hollow knight's world is caked in fossils, to the point that I would unironically consider the possibility that the sand, dirt and gravel we see is actually grinded up fossils eroded by the elements

- Fossilization may or may not occur faster in this world or in Hallownest in particular, as implied in the wanderer's journal entry on the crossroads statues

- Pyritized fossils are fossils formed from pyrite (fool's gold), sometimes also mixed in with other metals such as iron, instead of the more common rock ones. These are metallic and can look golden or metallic looking, just like geo. There's also opalized fossils but that's not relevant here

[deception-united]

Hi,

I'm rewriting an one-shot with OCs. They are both women in their late teen years, early twenties. A fancies B in a slightly obsessive way, and B is going to get married, so they don't get together at all. I thought about how should I write it being angsty, on A's pov, without ending up boring or whiny.

Have a great day/night :)

Hi, thanks for asking!

Writing Unrequited Love

This is a classic trope with a lot of emotional tension involved, but there's a fine line that falls between deeply evocative storytelling and a protagonist who comes across as melodramatic or pitiful; so, when writing from the POV of a character (A) who obsessively fancies another (B)—who is about to marry someone else—you want to capture the intensity of their emotions without exhausting the reader with endless self-pity. Here are some tips!

1. Make the obsession feel real, but not over-explained.

A’s feelings, albeit visceral, would be better woven into the narrative through sensory detail and subtext rather than outright declarations. Instead of repeating things like, "She loved B more than anything. It hurt. It wasn't fair," try showing the longing through her reactions—things like stolen glances, hesitations, or memorising B's habits as if hoarding the last pieces of her. Examples:

The way A's stomach tightens when B laughs at her fiancé’s joke.

The way A’s hand twitches, itching to reach out, when B absentmindedly brushes a lock of hair behind her ear.

The way A studies every micro-expression, searching for doubt or regret or anything that says she doesn't want to marry him, either.

2. Resist the urge to rant in internal monologue.

A bit of this is good and can add insight into A's exact thoughts and feelings, but it can be tempting to let her spiral into pages upon pages of why won't she love me back, which can get tedious. It may be more difficult to connect with excessive wallowing, but keeping internal monologues sharp, poignant, and purposeful can keep readers engaged. Include them mainly in moments of heightened emotion, rather than drowning the narrative in a flood of self-pity.

3. Let her have moments of denial and delusion.

A character in unrequited love will likely have fleeting moments where they convince themselves they still have a chance, no matter how irrational. Maybe B holds A’s hand for a second too long, or says something wistful about their past together, and A clings to it like an addict chasing a high. This emotional whiplash between hope and despair can add a lot of depth to her internal conflict throughout the story. Here's an example of how you can depict this in the narrative:

She's sitting on my side of the table. She still looks at me first when something funny happens. Maybe that means something. (hope) Then again, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m just a memory she keeps around for nostalgia’s sake. (reality)

4. You don't have to paint B like an unattainable angel.

It’s easy to write B as a perfect figure—someone A puts on a pedestal. And this may be how you choose to write it, which can make for an interesting story of its own! Maybe she sees B as radiant and untouchable, and every smile she gives someone else feels like a dagger. But it's also important to show B's flaws as well (though this may not work as well in a one-shot with only one POV). Maybe she’s oblivious to A’s pain, leads A on unintentionally, or is struggling with her own uncertainties. This adds more complexity: A isn’t just losing something; she’s also struggling with the fact that B chose someone else over her.

More tips and things to consider:

Suppressed emotion: let A's emotions simmer beneath the surface and show her turmoil through the little things, like a lingering glance or a hand that hesitates before letting go.

Instead of drowning the reader in raw, explicit yearning, let them feel the gaps. Make A's world feel off-kilter, distorted by B’s impending marriage. Maybe the wedding preparations invade her senses—the clink of glasses, the rustle of silk, the scent of flowers that now feel sickly sweet.

Self-delusion: give A moments of near-normalcy, where she's pretending to be fine and almost manages to be—until something tiny unravels her again.

How does A cope? Does she act out in small, destructive ways, grow distant and quiet, or lean in, helping with the wedding like it's some self-inflicted punishment?

---

Unrequited love rarely gets neat closure, which is what makes it so miserable. Maybe A finally accepts the loss, or maybe she doesn’t—but keep in mind that angst isn't just about drowning the reader in sadness, but about making them feel the weight of what's lost.

Hope this helped ❤

[thegremlininyourcloset]

In The Interest Of Getting Myself to Write

What fanfic idea would you like me to write for and then post a snippet of? (Brief description of each under the cut)

most of these are dc wips, but a few are from bsd

Kids In The Dark

Starring: pre-named, post-Hawaii Kon, an original character of mine, and a surprise crossover character (and trust me, it’s not someone you could have predicted)

In which Superboy meets a mysterious vigilante known only as Rebel, who seems to have an odd interest in his… health and wellbeing?

Notes: all the relationships between our main trio are completely platonic! Found family, baby. Also, platonic omegaverse and platonic soulmates because I can

Angst Level: Some

Batgirl, Batgirl, Batgirl…Superboy?

Starring: Newly-personed Kon, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Wayne, and Barbara Gordon

Inspired by: Suzukiblu’s wip “The Gotham Kid”

In which a Superboy new-to-existing flees to Gotham, the one place no one would ever look for him. The one and only Spoiler finds herself rather displeased with his situation. Apparently, genes CAN be passed on by found family…

Notes: the Batfamily are cryptids in this one, and the vigilante names might change (so might the title, frankly), once again, around family is the goal! Probably will include stephcass, though.

Angst Level: some. Kon is not doing the best.

Into The Robin-Verse

Starring: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Damian Wayne, Duke Thomas, Maps Mizoguchi, and Carrie Kelley (and possibly Cassandra Wayne)

Due to a rather unfortunate mishap, assorted Robins hailing from assorted timelines and universes have all appeared to ruin Dick Grayson’s day

Notes: once again, platonic relationships

Angst Level: Not insignificant . All of the Robins are stressed, and have issues.

me & you (at the end of the world)

Starring: Yosano Akiko and Ozaki Kouyou

When she’s attacked while walking home from school, the last thing twelve-year-old Ozaki Kouyou expects is to manifest a sword-wielding phantom. And then, before she has time to catch her breath, Kouyou finds herself whisked away from her home and family, summoned to an endless warfront. There, she meets eleven-year-old Yosano Akiko, the only other child—and only other Gifted—in the battalion. Together, the Angel Of Death and the Demon Of Mercy might just make it.

Notes: this is a Kousano fic. It’s not vary shippy at first, considering they’re kids and also actively at war, but that’s where it’s going.

Angst Level: WARNING: This is probably the heaviest fic on here. It deals with themes of war, death, killing, childhood trauma and some implied sexual assault. Stay safe.

Step Left For A Better Future

Starring: Stephanie Brown and Jason Todd, with a fair bit of Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Cassandra Wayne and Bruce Wayne

Inspired By: the handful of Steph in Titans-Tower fics in existence

Stephanie Brown knows she was never meant to be Robin. She knows she’s just a stand-in till Tim’s dad pulls his head out of his ass. She doesn’t even mind it! (Mostly) But she is getting pretty fucking tired of literally EVERY SINGLE asshole in the entirety of Gotham City waving that fact directly in her face. So when the Red Hood shows up in Titans Tower, yammering about her being the “wrong Robin”, Steph is at her limit. And when the Red Hood reveals himself to be Jason Todd? She snaps.

Notes: You’re kidding yourself if you think Jason wasn’t Steph’s Robin. Also, no betcest here or ever

Angst Level: This one is significantly less humorous than all of the Steph-in-Titans-Tower fics I’ve read. Steph’s going through it, Jason’s going through it…everyone suffers before we get any joy. May evolve into a series

bite back

Starring: Akutagawa Gin, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and an original character (also Atushi may feature eventually)

Ability users are a rumor, under the noses of most of society. But there’s a world even more secret than that of the ability users—the Supernaturals. Species with magic in their blood. (though there are magical humans)

The Akutagawa siblings never really knew their parents. And they didn’t know their family’s secret: their mother was a wolf shifter, a werewolf. The siblings’ wolf traits have been (mostly) invisible till now, due to unmet needs, an unsupportive environment, and a spell of their mother’s.

But all that changes when the Supernaturals reveal themselves to Yokohama’s Tripartite System, and a mysterious wolf shifter catches the siblings' scents…and recognizes them as her long-dead sister’s pups.

Notes: werewolves and pack dynamics go brrr

Angst: it’s the Akutagawa siblings. So yeah, it’s pretty damn angsty

finders keepers

Starring:Stephanie Brown, Dick Grayson, assorted batfam members

Inspired By: i don’t actually remember the fic

Dick Grayson has seen a lot of things in his undead life. But seeing a father leave use his own goddamn daughter out as bait still manages to shake him. Luckily, Bruce imparted in him one very important rule when it comes to children who lack or have unfit guardians…finders keepers. This is how he ends up with Stephanie Brown

Noted: found family yaaaayyyyyy

Angst Level: quite a bit, but there will be comfort

Girl Meets Bird

Starring: Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Kate Kane, with some Jim Gordon

Look, Babs didn’t mean to become a dark creature of the night…at least, not at first. At first, she just wanted to fight crime. In Gotham. At night. Whilst being twelve and mostly untrained.

Notes: cryptid batfam, but it’s early batfam, and follows Babs in her feral teenager era

Angst: Currently the least angsty idea on here.

Weapons No More

Starring: Cassandra Wayne and Kon-El, with some Bats

In most universes, Superboy spends his first years of life all but fending for himself. In this one, Cassandra Wayne was found earlier. And when Cass meets Superboy for the very first time, it feels like looking in a mirror. And if there’s one thing that being a Wayne has taught her, it’s to reach out a hand to a kid in need

Notes: Cass basically went “mine. My new family” on sight

Angst: we got clone angst, we got Cass angst we got teenage rebellion

the ruination of a moonflower

Starring: Ozaki Kouyou, Izumi Kyouka, and Nakahara Chuuya

Ozaki Kouyou knows that the Port Mafia is the only place for her. She’s poured years of effort, and pints of blood both hers and not, all to mold this organization into one she can be proud to be part of. And then suddenly Chuuya’s been attacked. And this wouldn’t have been a problem because her protégé can take care of himself just fine—except it is. It is a problem because now her little brother’s in a hospital bed and she doesn’t know what went wrong. It was supposed to be an easy mission. And now Kouyou revenge to enact. And then before she knows it…something’s changed. Somethings broken. And something has to give.

Notes: I have a whole-ass series planned for this one, and it’s a wild ride.

Angst: a lot. This one hurts, guys

[right-there-ride-on]

Gyro’s Just as Bad: A Gyjo Essay

its generally understood that gyjo is important to each other, but since sbr is from Johnny’s pov we get his thoughts on the ‘why’ more than gyro’s. Johnny’s side of things also tends to get more emphasis in fanon, which I just wanted to try and illustrate the development of their relationship from Gyro’s pov since I think that’s the part of gyjo that seems the most underexplored.

First thing to note, and something that’s pretty funny, is that Gyro is an asshole to everyone at the start of the race. Through the first stage hes basically this ‘lone rider’ character. Before the race starts, Gyro helps Johnny out by helping him get on the horse, but during the race itself he’s pretty brutal to his competitors. It’s Johnny who chooses to chase him, which Gyro didn’t ask for. But by the end of the stage Johnny’s proved his grit and Gyro allows him to accompany him. It’s cute how quickly he takes Johnny under his wing, especially since he’s still so hostile to everyone else.

Gyro presents himself as this very confident figure, and carries them through the attacks of Mrs. Robinson, Strohiem, and Oyecomova. The Boom-Boom family was more of a team effort between Gyro, Johnny and Tim, and they mostly won thanks to Tusk awakening. It isn’t until Pork Pie Hat Kid attacks and Gyro gets taken out of commission that Johnny is forced to be the one doing the quick thinking and rescuing. I think both Johnny being the one to rescue him and his newfound determination to collect the corpse tickles Gyro, similar to how he was interested in Johnny at the starting line because of Johnny’s stubbornness with Slow Dancer.

I think a big part of the reason Gyro is initially attracted to Johnny is because Johnny has the fortitude to go after what he really wants; unlike Gyro, who, as revealed in True Man’s World, remains to some extent paralyzed by his family’s traditions. So far the only thing Gyro has ever done to differentiate himself from his given role as executioner and eldest son is join the race, supposedly for Marco. Yet as demonstrated with his continued correspondence with Naples and their delivery of the Zombie Horse thread, Gyro did not cut himself off from his country and family entirely. He doesn’t know how to exist without it. Johnny meanwhile is fiercely independent; by contrast Gyro is still dependent on his tradition, country and family to guide his decisions. That’s why I think Marco was only an excuse / smaller factor in Gyro’s choice to join the race than what was initially presented. Gyro left to join the race because he’d never had a chance to develop himself as a person outside of his role as eldest son and executioner. That’s why his question about Marco’s death is about ‘consent’. Marco was supposed to be Gyro’s first solo execution. Marco was imprisoned as a traitor to the crown and by law would need to die. As a prisoner he has no consent to give, and Gyro knows that. The consent Gyro needs is his own. Gyro needs to understand, for himself, who he is and what his actual values are before he ‘consents’ to being the executioner.

In the Third Stage, Gyro admits to himself that “maybe the corpse hunt will help me grow a little.” Like I said, I think that to an extent Marco’s unjust execution was not necessarily the entire reason Gyro came to the race. Gyro may not have recognized it himself, but what he’s looking for is an opportunity to define himself outside of what he knows. Marco isnt what he’s thinking about when he loses the Third Stage; Gyro is thinking about how much he himself is pissed off by the loss. Unconsciously, Gyro recognizes that he’s not just racing for Marco, but to prove something to himself. Moreover, easily winning would prove that he’s fine as he is, and he can back to Naples, ignorant but having in a sense ‘gotten it out of his system’. But losing forces him to reflect, not just on the loss, but on what he’s racing for. That’s why Johnny’s advice is for him ‘to hunger’. Because Gyro still doesn’t really understand his own motivations for racing.

That’s why Ringo’s words about his being a conformist in True Man’s World bother him so badly. Because Gyro knows that, up until that point, he has been a conformist. He still relies on Naples for guidance and Gregorio’s teachings still echo in his head. But his friendship with Johnny is what allows him to break the first of the family traditions he’d so strictly adhered to, and give in to ‘sentimentality’. This is the first ‘new’ value he explicitly chooses to define himself by, and the first part of himself he discovers outside of his ‘conformity’. Gyro risks a lot by going back to confront Ringo. He’s challenging not just Ringo, but himself. Only a ‘true man’, or someone fighting for ‘something’ that they desire for themselves, would have the ‘dark determination’ necessary to beat Ringo. And Gyro finds it. Ringo welcomes him to the true man’s world because he recognizes that Gyro has found something to fight for.

In Catch the Rainbow, Gyro takes Johnny’s advice from the Third Stage and creates another value to define himself by - a hunger to win, for himself. That’s why he tells Diego to gtfo of the way; Gyro’s chasing himself on the Golden Path. Supposedly it’s a path for him alone. Ironically, it’s Johnny who interrupts Gyro and Diego’s battle on the Golden Path. Textually, Johnny realizes Diego is cheating but Gyro is so desperate to win that he doesn’t realize it. Metaphorically, Johnny interrupts to demonstrate that Gyro isn’t done growing yet, and is not yet ready to truly walk the ‘golden path’ of the True Man’s World. He doesn’t yet have the self-definition or subsequent selfish hunger necessary to do it. Only together are Gyro and Johnny able to defeat Diego and continue their pursuit of self-improvement (the corpse parts). However, afterwards Gyro lashes out at Johnny for interrupting, further demonstrating that in many areas he is still immature, childishly taking his feelings out on Johnny instead of waiting for an explanation of why Johnny interfered, and not really listening when he does.

In A Silent Way, Johnny is again what enables Gyro to find his second area of self-definition: mentorship. It’s heavily implied that Gyro is the first one to break Zeppeli tradition and teach the Golden Ratio to someone outside the family; however, he won’t teach Johnny any other way but the Zeppeli family way (‘I can’t do it’ four times), demonstrating his continued struggle between tradition and independence.

Sugar Mountain is iconic, but just as a refresh: at the end of the arc Gyro sees again how much Johnny is willing to give up for him. I think that this shapes his approach to Johnny afterwards; he’s much softer, and more protective. Because of Johnny’s actions in Sugar Mountain, he’s realized that finding his ‘golden path’ isn’t something he can do alone; and that he really does need Johnny as much as Johnny needs him. As noted before, Johnny gave up everything for Gyro. This is the impetus for Gyro to really embrace his role as friend and mentor, no longer afraid that his newly discovered ‘sentimentality’ is a weakness, but embracing Johnny as a trusted companion and deciding that he doesn’t need to be a ‘lone rider’ to win and find the independence and self-definition he’d been looking for. Johnny, not the race, is what pushes Gyro into reflection, soul-searching, and adaptation, embracing the world as it comes instead of adhering to everything he’s been taught.

Gyro defeats his narrative foil in Wekapipo. Wekapipo has abandoned his homeland entirely, and been abandoned by it. He hopes to find a new beginning in America. He too is looking to define himself anew. However, Gyro, now having reconciled what he’s been taught with what he’s learning with Johnny, is able to pull off a miracle. He doesn’t need to be someone new entirely or abandon who he was; he just needed to understand himself. Note that this is also the arc where he finds the golden rectangle in Johnny’s eyes - literally melding where he came from (Golden Ratio, Zeppeli traditions) with what he’s chasing now (self-improvement, alongside Johnny). That’s why Gyro’s allowed to win this stage, and he and Johnny get their one-two finish. Gyro earned his victory against Wekapipo and he earned first place in the stage, he and Johnny finding the best path forward (the golden path) by combining Tusk and a Steel Ball to create their own. Furthermore, Gyro reconnects Wekapipo with Naples by revealing his sister is still alive; thus Wekapipo too is allowed to live and try to reconcile where he came from with where he’s going, starting the journey Gyro now realizes he’s been on.

Frankly I’m tired so I’m not going to get into D4C arc but by the time sbr reaches its climax most of the heavy relationship work for gyjo is done anyway. I hope anyone who questions Gyro’s side of things finds this essay helpful!