class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)
hey. when cis society is oppressing a trans man, what he is experiencing is. In Fact. misogyny. i'm sorry i know none of us like to be reminded of our agab, and it hurts whenever people perceive you as the wrong gender. but a cis person hate-criming, assaulting, verbally abusing, etc, a trans man is not doing "transandrophobia" because they do not perceive him as a man.
they perceive him as a woman failing at her gender, as a woman who has been seduced and lied to and manipulated because women are so easily led astray, just like it says in the bible. they perceive him as a woman who has been mutilated. they perceive him as a dyke that needs to be fixed. if they are hate-criming him because they *do* perceive him as a man, because he passes well enough they aren't thinking he could be trans, then they're doing so out of homophobia, perceiving him as a gay man, a pervert, a sissy, a danger to children. OR, they are being transphobic but specifically because they think he might be transfeminine instead. when cis society oppresses a trans woman, they are able to do it on multiple levels at once. She's a woman failing at her gender, a dyke that needs to be fixed. Or she's an evil and grotesque crossdressing pervert, a rude caricature, a danger to polite society. she will never be doing enough to escape oppression entirely, no matter if she gets every surgery she can and wears makeup every day and passes perfectly, because she lives under a patriarchy, and she's a woman, so she lives in a panopticon, and HAVING to get surgery and wear make-up to be respected IS oppression, especially if the alternative is being hate-crimed.
trans women (and trans men who pass) are not experiencing "transandrophobia" when a 'queer women and nbs" event turns them away at the door for being too masculine. they are. IN FACT!! experiencing the byproducts of misogyny in a patriarchy!!! where the terfs and coward cis women running those events and occupying those spaces have been taught (sometimes through experience, sometimes by men, sometimes by women) throughout life that men = stronger and more dangerous than women ALWAYS. That they need to protect themselves at all times and always be vigilant. That men and women can't be friends without sexual tension (and so as queer women the mere existence of what they perceive as a "man" is a threat). That women need a separate sports league because they can't possibly compete with someone who has even a little bit "extra" (an unquantifiable amount actually because there isn't a standard range) testosterone. That women should cook and men should fix cars. i promise you, i promise i promise i promise. it's misogyny.
like!!! you don't say cis gay men experiences "androphobia", bc that's not a thing!! you sound like fucking mens rights activists guys please! you don't say a black man experiences "misandrynoir"!! because living in a patriarchy fundamentally means men do not experience oppression based on their gender. its not happening. shut the fuck up.
stop walking us back to 2014 can we please take a step forward and stop bitching about this. there are genuine issues in the world and i'm frankly sick of people who should be smarter than that needing to be gently hand-held through this fucking explanation for the millionth time and still stomping their feet.
saw a post questioning shipping Senua and Thórgestr and started to reblog it with a tag novel-- felt weird about doing that since this is lengthy and potentially derailing, so making my own post instead. Spitballing under the cut:
First off, any time someone is like, "the real reason people ship this is because they find the dude attractive," this is SO funny to me as someone who doesn't find men attractive IRL and has fiercely loved Senua since I played the first game, like-- actually I find the dynamic between those two characters to be compelling and interesting precisely because of all the baggage between them re: their backgrounds, the rough (put mildly!) beginning of their relationship, all the things they don't talk about, and them finding a common enemy/common ground to work with. The explicit parallels between them stated in-game scratched an itch in my brain. The minute they pointed out the dark rot on his arm, it was like, "oh! hello there! NOW I'm interested in whatever your whole deal is" for me. Also, idk man, I too would follow Senua around after she knocked me into the dirt and then showed me a way to fight the giants that I very much wanted to fight instead of appease.
The idea that Thórgestr was part of the Orkney Raid that killed and mutilated Dillion is VERY interesting food for thought, even if I don't personally have that headcanon (surely there are more viking raiding groups than just the Bjorg). I think the Furies or the Shadow said something similar about Fargrimr (his kin murdered yours, you shouldn't save him, etc.) so I completely get that line of thought, but I think the game left it ambiguous enough that it's up for interpretation. Would I read fic with that premise? Yeah, I'd check that out. Could Senua forgive Thorgestr if his people were involved? Sounds fun to explore.
If (ha, when?) I write fic, I'd have to think more about it especially wrt timelines, like when did the Bjorg start specifically raiding for slaves for giant food sacrifices vs. killing people for resources and wealth? How far off are we from the old gods "dying" and the volcano erupting? Was it indeed a different group of raiders who made a deal with Zynbel, attacked Senua's home, and made the sacrifice at that time to Hela?
At the very least, I think there's a time jump between the end of Hellblade I and the beginning of Hellblade II since Senua wasn't alone on that slave ship and at least one of the (brief) survivors knew her by name. I wouldn't mind exploring that gap of time, too.
In any case I do agree that it would take a VERY long time for Senua to consciously catch feelings for anyone let alone Thorgestr with all their collective baggage. The idea of them having a relationship beyond friendship in the far off future of an AU where he survives is the only one that can make sense in my brain, personally. It would take time! Time they didn't get in the game! But I think there are a lot of different roads that could take, and some of them might be healthier than others. Shipping them certainly isn't forgetting or excusing what happened to Dillion-- or even mutually exclusive from still shipping Senua and Dillion. Or, frankly, also shipping Senua and Astridr, because I can see that ship too.
One of the nice things about all the details Ninja Theory didn't expand upon and that they left that ending so open is that the sky's the limit. I'm VERY interested in seeing fandom tackle this game as we get farther from the initial release.
going slightly feral today for characters who don't think of themselves as being "~into~" touch and physical intimacy suddenly discovering that they actually are, in like an embarrassingly huge way
"oh fine, I'll indulge you, but I'll have you know that I'm not exactly cuddly, darling. 🙄" (proceeds to wrap themselves around their partner in their sleep like a boa constrictor) (yes this becomes a regular occurrence)
"no dear, I don't like hugs" (does, in fact, melt into each embrace with a soft sigh and eyes sliding shut, all gooey inside like a person-shaped fudge brownie)
"how juvenile. I'm not ticklish, I'm not a child. 😒" (starts convulsing with stifled laughter if their partner as much as wiggles their fingers in their general direction) (no they are very cool I promise)
"don't touch me 😒" (secretly pouts when their explicit wish is respected. no wait come back i didn't mean don't as in don't, i meant it as try harder. yes i know that's counterintuitive. no you should read my mind exactly. how is that even hard--)
"*makes a longing 🥺 face every time their partner is doing something just out of their reach, wanting to touch them but not wanting to come off as ~needy~*" (scoffs and turns away when asked if they want a hug) ((that means "yes please"))
"ugh, fine, but if you ruin my hair--" (all but tears up at having their scalp gently scratched. finds that they do not give a solitary shit about their hair now, actually.) (yes, they will now regularly plop their head in their partner's lap as a silent request for scritches. they're not cuddly, though.)
will not hold hands. will, however, knock shoulders while walking. (it means try again. it means please never stop trying.)
After the finale, I realized that Qimir and Ben have more in common than I thought; visual parallels aside. Both are way toooo gentle to Osha and Rey respectively, to these woman who are their adversary. They are attracted by their force power, the potential they hold.
Both want these women to be their student, and I'm highkey sure they don't want them to be their student student, but as a companion. For them wanting to be a master to these women--aka being superior than them--they treated them as equals. Really proves my point, isn't it?
They are lonely. They want a connection, a relationship. The reason why they seek a student because that's the only dynamic they know of what a relationship be like, the ones they experienced an emotional and social bond with. And these men want more of that. [a special case for ben for he has a living breathing family but that's not the point here].
Part of that is because they're being shunned or betrayed by their jedi master. Qimir is definitely afraid of Venestra in the season finale; she scarred him after all. Ben is afraid of Luke on the Crait sequence i read it somewhere he does; that old man tried to kill him after all. These experiences lead them not to seek refuge on the dark side, but to be disillusioned of the jedi as well.
The jedi path doesn't suit them, neither is a sith path. They're in the secret third thing, somewhere in between. They saw it, they're trained for it, they saw the flaw, they find it bullshit. They're having a hard time to conform to either side because they don't suit them so well. They seek a third path, but they need a companion to accompany them.
They started to knock some sense on these women on their faith on these people who hurt them [Osha: Jedi // Rey: Jedi, Han]. They're basically saying to the girls : "Why do you trust them? They HURT me. They'll hurt you too. You deserve better than that, wasting your time and energy to them."
Not just force potential these men got attracted to their respective love interests, but they empathized to them as well. They recognized the Ioneliness the girls have, their longing for a family, to have a mark on the galaxy. Because that's them as well. They said "I feel what you feel, trust me it's an unpleasant experience. But you don't have to feel that anymore. Let me be your companion, please. Together, we'll be less lonely, less loss."
wordcount: 4.7k [wip]
chapters: 4/?
rating: mature/explicit
tags: Aziraphale and Crowley Make a Bet, Canon Compliant, in the sense that Aziraphale was canonically a bishop at some point, Mutual Pining, Cosplaying as Humans, Aziraphale and Crowley do Human-Roleplay, and fall in love two-ways oops fools
Bishop Aziraphale and Crowley make a bet. Over their own, hypothetical souls. Watch them succumb, like the fools they are. [or: Aziraphale and Crowley do some human roleplay.]
asking such burning questions as - If you put on a mask, do you become the mask? Which parts of you are merely acted; how much of them is drawn from your own self? Where do you end and they begin? Can you separate your emotions neatly, or does the actor fall along with the character? Does he want to?
managed to get all of the possible responses to the Treasure Hunt reports that you can make and submit at the Naranja/Uva Academy website! Upon being shared to twitter/X, a randomly selected character will respond to your report, many of the characters bidding you a fun and safe journey to Kitakami. It seems like the opportunity to make your report will last 'til the 17th.
(very shoddily translated on google translate english versions are below the cut!)
casey also talks about sepang 2015 what do you think of that
oh in that podcast? uh... lemme listen again...
yeah idk it's not really anything new I'd say? he's said basically all the same stuff in more interesting and extensive ways elsewhere. I think casey inevitably has a very 'well feuding is bad and helps nobody' point of view, has expressed that before in the past, does it here again, and he's also drawn a parallel between himself and marc on several occasions. which... well, of course there's similarities in terms of public discourse or whatever, but the parallel really falls apart whenever casey argues the feuds cost valentino. like, I do think it's sometimes important to just. keep in mind. it's interesting that casey draws this comparison in his mind but that doesn't necessarily means he's right about this. I'm not sure how you'd argue that starting a feud with casey cost valentino anything competitively? you can argue it didn't help him I guess, and then we can have a debate about the ins and outs of the 2008 season. we can also have an argument that in a hypothetical world where casey isn't ill in 2009, valentino doesn't break his leg and casey isn't on a piece of junk in 2010, and valentino isn't on a piece of junk in 2011-12, then actually maybe valentino sparking open animosity with casey COULD have cost him. but we don't know that! didn't happen! I wish we could have found out, but we never got the chance! as it stands, the tally on this is pretty straightforward: casey won the title when things were reasonably civil between them in 2007, and valentino took control of the following season at the exact moment he worsened the relationship between the pair of them in 2008. obviously, it's all more complicated than that and casey would of course argue laguna didn't negatively affect his subsequent performances... but it certainly didn't help them. like, at the very worst valentino escalating tensions in 2008 is a complete net neutral. after 2009, them being bitchy to each other every other tuesday was completely competitively irrelevant beyond maybe affecting how they approached occasionally fighting for a podium position. hey, maybe casey used that feud to fire himself up through sheer spite throughout the later stages of his career, but that doesn't actually support his anti-feud stance - it's basically the exact same thing as what valentino does. they're both quite similar in that regard! always so hungry to prove a point, to show how someone else is wrong. kinda half the point with this feuding business is to get yourself going, get yourself motivated, yeah. he straight up openly admits to using yamaha's repeat rejection of him as a way of giving himself motivation, and at the end of the day that's really not all that different?
anyway, what else does casey say... oh yeah, that him and the other aliens were already kinda prepared for this and had learned vale's tricks. that valentino had only been able to get into the minds of the previous generation. welllllll *wiggles hand* sure, I mean, he did clearly have to change his approach... he couldn't just use the exact same playbook to get to them, either on-track or off-track. but that's why he did change up the playbook... again, whether you want to believe valentino won his final two titles 'in the head' rather than just through pure pace kinda depends on how you assess the evidence, but it is at the very least a debate. and, y'know, it's always worth remembering that valentino's most important mind games with casey didn't happen in a press conference... it was on the track. and the on-track stuff really is just embedded in how valentino approaches winning. speaking of aliens, this is what dani and jorge have said:
like, valentino's entire approach to his riding, even to the way he's setting his bike up, is deliberately about directly fucking with you... he's not actually always trying to be faster than you as much as he's trying to give himself the tools to make your life miserable, to pressure you into mistakes, etc etc... and again, especially with casey (if anything because he was so mentally sturdy), the off-track stuff was really just window dressing. (I know they bicker a lot after 2009 but it's just so fundamentally irrelevant to actual on-track competition.) so you can be aware of those tricks, but it also doesn't necessarily help you when someone's being nasty to you on-track in a way you just fully do not enjoy. which is what it was like for casey! for casey, a lot of this comes back to the truly unpleasant context of how he was perceived by the public, how he was treated as mentally weak or 'broken' or whatever partly because he had the misfortune of coming up against a bloke who had the reputation for breaking rivals. I think it's quite natural to end up with a bit of a hardliner 'actually I've never been mentally affected by a result in my life' stance - and of course casey is a lot tougher than a lot of people give him credit for. that being said. sometimes your rivals affect you, shit happens, it's part of the game. it's fundamentally a nice idea to think that valentino's tactics weren't just morally wrong but also ineffective, which is kind of the appeal of this narrative, right? you want to believe you're above that, you want to believe you were adequately prepared and wise to valentino's tactic. it's unsurprising and understandable that casey does tend to tell the story that way, but again it's *wiggles hand* also hard to describe it as completely factual
uh. what else. oh I'm thrilled casey does canonically know valentino and marc were friends, he has said he wasn't following motogp too much during that time period so you couldn't be sure of that. does this mean anything? does it tell you anything? well, no, but it's just a pleasing thought to me. I like that. oh also 'provoking particularly aggressive riders isn't a good idea' is kinda a funny take from casey? like, he of all people would hate the idea of being cowed by someone's reputation like that... casey's right that provoking fast riders can potentially be dangerous, but y'know I do think that's probably not news to anyone almost nine years later. um. that's all I've got I think
Lucy blinks, looking down at the shirt she's wearing to discover that it is not only inside out, but also backwards. The fact that she managed not to notice the tag under her chin for several hours is a testament to how hectic her job is. “Oh! Gosh. You know, I got paint on my other blouse during recess and had to change in a hurry. Just a sec...” She steps inside the classroom closet to fix her wardrobe mishap, then returns only a little flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry about that. Can I help you, Mr.—?”
Both you and @is-it-mungojerry-or-rumpelteazer asked about this one ^^
This is one of two that I basically just have a thorough outline done for. The basic summary is it's the Amis final year of high school, and their final play they're all doing together, which happens to be Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Enjolras is a trans man who has specifically asked to be given a male part, and Grantaire basically just wants the closest seat possible to watch Enjolras perform. Further summary below the cut:
Unfortunately, their casting director ignores Enjolras' request to be cast male, and casts him as Titania instead. And Grantaire is cast as Bottom.
(If you don't know A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania is essentially temporarily cursed by Puck to fall in love with an ass, that "ass" being Bottom, who's had his head magically turned into that of a donkey, also by Puck.)
[love cursed] Titania: “Thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me on the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.”
What follows is the two of them getting closer and bonding throughout rehearsals (and private line-practicing), and Grantaire trying to find a way behind the scenes to make this part more comfortable for Enjolras to play, be they against the director's wishes or not.
Also Bottom is just very R coded. For example:
Bottom: “Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that.”