#i know that song is about a complicated relationship with god btw. but i do feel like that just adds to my point

[skltart]

they're sooo ya hey by vampire weekend coded

[meteor752]

What I would have done

If you have been keeping up with my posts for the last week, you may have noticed that I fucking despise the new Descendants movie

There’s a lot of reasons behind this. One, nostalgia, I love the original ones (Harry Hook is one of my all time favorite characters lol I think he’s fun). Two, I expected more of the franchise, because it’s fucking Disney, and while I know Kenny Ortega wasn’t the director this time, there would at least be people who worked on the original movies involved in the process, so I thought they at least knew what they were doing. Three, nothing in the movie makes any fucking sense, and I’m not usually a person who gets hung up on nitpicks, like if you entertain me then do whatever you want, but my god it’s impossible to ignore.

But most of all, the story they were trying to tell just isn’t interesting.

Like, if I would tell someone what the best part of Descendants is, it’s not the songs, or the cast, or the costumes, or even really the characters. Don’t get me wrong I love all of those parts, and I doubt the movies would be even close to as good as they are if you removed one of these things. But the best and most interesting part to me, and to a lot of people in the fandom as well, is the concept of The Isle Of The Lost.

The concept of taking all of these classic Disney Villains with wildly different aesthetics, motives, ideologies, and overall moralities and placing them all on an island and make them build up a society, that shit’s fascinating, but the core movies do next to nothing with it cause they spend all their time on Auradon. The second one focuses the most on it, and guess what, that one’s the best one!

(I know the books exist, I read them, but they just weren’t that good, like it felt like I was reading bad fan fiction)

So what would I do for Descendants four?

Well, I’d set in on the fucking Isle.

Actually, I think this would genuinely work better as a series. Not that long of a series tho, maybe like eight episodes, each episode like 40 minutes long.

Each episode would focus on a different VK, set a few years before the first movie, and have a short composed story about their general life.

I don’t know which VKs exactly, but I think Harriet Hook could be interesting, her episode being like four or five years before the first movie so we can see preteen C3, I think that would be cute, also a young CJ.

Possibly the Gaston twins, though Lefou Deux could work too. Whichever it would be, the other would feature.

Jade, Jay’s cousin, could be a lot of fun, maybe have like a rivalry between the two.

Freddie and Celia, I think it’s insane that they never mention Freddie in D3, but like I wanna know what their relationship is like.

And of course, Red! Queen of Hearts is a villain, she should be on the Isle. And if any of you dare tell me that she’s from wonderland and they couldn’t like, capture her or whatever, they got fucking Hades on the Isle, they resurrected some guys to place them there, Queen of Hearts is not a problem.

(Also like, Morgie could be there, but this time as a real VK)

But yeah, lot of options lol.

Every episode would show just the grim reality of what these kids would have to live through their whole lives, the complicated relationships they would have with their parents, and really emphasize that fact. D1 was the only one that really focused on how the Isle kids were kids who were all victims of insane abuse their whole lives. I mean, in D3 they all like happily run to meet them once the barrier is down, which is crazy.

Also, the show would be rated PG-13. Like, I’m not asking for graphic scenes of abuse, but I do want it to be kinda gritty and grim, with some more psychological and mental abuse taking place. Also, we’re told multiple times about gang wars, but we aren’t really shown any. Maybe one episode could focus on that, like idk Clay Clayton (insane name btw) and his gang.

But most importantly, we’d have all the Disney villains in cool new leather outfits, which is what I think everyone wants tbh. I have gotten that one part of ‘Life Is Sweeter’ where the villain comes up more than any part of the movie, like people like the villains more than anything. And yeah I know they wouldn’t be young and hot anymore, but like we can have some extreme Milf and Dilf looks, it will even out.

Descendants is one of, if not the most popular franchise Disney Channel has made, it deserves a better continuation than Rise of Red.

Also, if the show is popular then we could have a season two/sister series, about the kids of Auradon, that could be interesting too, and also have some dark shit in it, idk. The way that Queen Leah spoke to Audrey in D3 had some dark undertones, so I think her episode could be interesting. Could also feature the political implications of The Isle, potential protests and propaganda, idk.

Also, Chloe can get an episode, so boom we got them both!

So what I’m trying to say here is this:

Disney hire me

[artnevoa]

Any lore for your oc and her relationship w/ muds? 🥒🥒

AHAH oh god, it’s rough.

It’s like an enemies -> kinda friends -> friends -> friends with benefits -> lovers for a very brief time -> bitter exes -> coworkers and friends (with sometimes benefits) -> strangers

More under the cut

It’s complicated and nothing really ends well. They started out as apartment neighbors pre-gorillaz in 95/96-ish, and they HATED each other. (This takes place in London btw because I like to think that she frequented Rick Black’s Record Shack often. I know he was in Stoke in canon, but I also think Murdoc could potentially live in different cities or towns during his search for potential band members or his many questionable and odd jobs. At least right before Phase 1).

Until she went to one of his failed gigs and offered a cigarette to console him for getting booed off stage. On a whim, she invited him to her gallery show, which also was a failure because the gallery printed the wrong date on the flier. He was the only one who showed up because he remembered the correct date. They started hanging out, then fucking around until they decided to start dating. But it was an on and off relationship cuz his priority is to become famous and honestly he’s pretty scummy. Murdoc moved back to Stoke, and I think she’d move elsewhere too.

Eventually she dumps him for good and they go on their separate ways until he reaches out to her on D Day after getting arrested and tries to convince her to bail him out (he lied saying he was framed and he was just a pedestrian walking by LMAO). She does not bail him out. But she does hang around because she found out he has to take care of Stuart and she knows that Murdoc is NOT a reliable caretaker. She doesn’t try to involve herself too much though since they’re exes and it’s just overall weird for her. Eventually, Murdoc offers her a job at Kong Studios to be a storyboard artist since she’s been stuck working a couple of shitty minimum wage jobs and despite him being an asshole, he does care about her as a friend at least. She ends up taking the job but is only around for phase 1 and 2 because Murdoc’s inflated ego when he reaches fame is hard for her to be around. There’s a lot of tension between them (sexual/anger/sometimes romantic but that’s very rare) during this time while she’s trying to be professional and do her work. After the tabloids found out they used to be a thing and took that out of context photo, it really strains a lot of things because she didn’t want to be in the spotlight, especially as being known as his ex. She gets harassed by paparazzi and he doesn’t care too much.

There comes a point where she has enough and she got a great art gig out of it, so she leaves him. This is around the time when Noodle “passed” and the movie failed to happen and his whole band is falling apart. So Murdoc has this psychotic breakdown and flies to Mexico. All the while he’s in denial that she left him for good and keeps calling her phone to leave voicemails of how angry he is, how much he misses her, updates on where he’s at, etc etc. She never picks up and eventually blocks his number from calling. I should mention that during this breakdown, he’s convinced that she’ll come back and stick around like she always does and for some reason thinks she’ll meet him in Mexico.

She moves back to the states and goes to rehab all the while. They eventually meet each other again years and years down the line, but she’s married and he never forgot her. (Those love songs on plastic beach are about her). They never end up together, but at least there’s closure.

This is their dynamic btw. Out of all of them, they’re the most like Bojack and Diane.

[hewholivesinhisname]

On The Goddess

Happy Mother’s day everyone! It’s the Patriachy here and I thought I would give all of you a little gift. Knowledge is power as the saying goes.

I could be wrong about all this. I could be, it’s important to say because I could just be a very mentally ill headcase with delusions about his ex-gf. It’s prossible. Right? But I don’t think so. I am traumatized and have a history of mental illness, but that doesn’t change reality.

2. Marika McCoola is the Goddess. The big one. Asherah, Queen of Heaven. She prefers the name Baba Yaga of course because as she says “She’s so evil she can get away with anything but she always has a reason” if you look Marika up, that’s the book she choose to write and the character she’s obsessed with. However, it’s much simpler, really to just call her The goddess in the same way it’s easier to call God, God, right?

3. Now, if you haven’t noticed there’s a huge international system of control operating in all of your lives and it’s very oppressive. She’s the one in control of it. She is at the top of the pyramid. She’s at the center of it all. And while she has precious few shrines around if you pay attention you’ll see signs and symbols of her power all around you. B symbolism, Owls, Spiderwebs with a black widow at the center etc. etc. Bitcoin if you notice has a big B with two towers on it. You’ll see a lot of bee references int eh culture such as the black and yellow school buzzes, masonic beehives, bumble, babylon bee etc. etc. She runs it along with a select group of high witches and warlocks “the fascist class” so to speak.

4. The way that she controls everyone is through the money. Everyone does things for money and she controls what the money does and to do that she needs a network of “trustworthy” people to run the economic system and this is the deep state which is identitical to the secret society network and the nobility and the way they pass it down is through Child, torture, rape and brainwashing. That’s the big secret in all the intelligence agencies and it ensures that these people never come out and tell the truth because they know if they do all their sex secrets will come out and they’ll be killed for being sadistic pedophiles. And of course she keeps the people in poverty and sexual/relationship poverty for the men in particular so if you are very corrupt man you’ll go up and try to reach new heights of power within her network. If you don’t, you’ll probably end up an incel loser with no money and that is on purpose.

5 She is “at the bottom” of both the Q (Queen) movement and Bitcoin. That’s why Cardi B came out with that red bottom shoes song. The pope wears, RED shoes if you notice. Guy isn’t talking to god let met tell you but he’s talking to someone. The pope, btw probably controls the city of london and the city of london controls the US military who is in charge of making war on and controlling the American People. The military probably tells Hollywood exactly what to do and what movies to make, especially for the kids, because everyone knows that children are the future so you have to brainwash the kids with both Media and with the education system. The pope in turn probably reports to some false god or other and there’s a whole class of these people in addition to a bunch of corrupt Jews who control quite a bit. So, that was a bit complicated but what’s important here is that there is a hierarchy of control

6. And this hierarchy of control probably trends towards reporting to certain locations controlled by the witches who run EVERYTHING. They probably do it in Salem, in Ohio in Seven Hills and Parma (the parma is a “pizza” reference”). In kerala india and other places such as Indianopolis which is very masonic.

7. Now, that’s very abstract but in her personal life, what happened between me and Marika is basically we got in a relationship and then we had a fight and she left me. I wanted to get married and have a family, Marika didn’t. And the reason that this is harmful is that if it ever gets out that Marika really is the goddess, she’s going to be sending a strong message to all young women in the world that the RIGHT thing to do is not to go out and be a good woman, get married and have children. No, you should just go out and party and pursue a big career make a lot of money and not have children. Throw your man in the trash, so to speak. She broke my heart. She hurt me probably more than anyone else has done.

8. And of course there’s a lot of other things that Marika hasn’t done which is very important such as speaking up about the importance of economic equality, she hasn’t spoken up about the poison in the food, about the vaccine genocide. There’s a lot of corrupt and evil things in the world and Marika there hasn’t talked about ANY of them. And, let me tell, she’s not dumb and she could be educating you and one of the big reasons that we have metals in the food is that smart intellectuals like Marika won’t speak up about it and instead choose to benefit from it. She isn’t eating that shit, but she’ll let your kids get poisoned by the rBST in the milk. She has enough money and clout to not be an onlyfans girl but she’s more than happy to let other women be so desperate that they have to prostitute themselves to the highest bidder. She tends to avoid anything political in public. Except maybe some nods to supporting abortion rights and feminism.

9. Now, let’s refute first wave feminism here, because everyone thinks that feminism is fucking fantastic, it’s great! Feminists claim that the root of female oppression is motherhood so you should avoid having children. All the women should get free birth control and abortions. Women are encouraged to go into the corporate world instead of having kids.

10. So the obvious thing here is that most women who enter the economic system are going to be horribly exploited. In the past, it was bad enough that the men had to partake of this shit and people had to fight really hard to stop women being exploited in the “infernal mills” and such where young women would have their hair yanked out and shit like that. Now, all of that shit might return because instead of full employment at high wages, they are working full time to drive wages in the basement. So, it is not “empowering” for women to enter the workforce. It’s empowering for a narrow selection of women in the fascist class like Sheryl Sandberg, but not for the average woman. It would be empowering for women if we promoted unions, the free market, a basic income for everyone, gave people guaranteed jobs and destroyed the monopolist corporations. If we destroyed the corporations, ended war and all the men were working together then even if there were a few bad men there would be plenty of rich simps for the women to marry if they so choose. So, you know, the average woman today gets to go deep into debt, forced to do onlyFans or some other desperate thing to pay high rents and we’re supposed to believe that single women being forced to pay 2000$ a month to slumlords with no way to support themselves except degrees that the upper class won’t pay for or selling their bodies is “empowering.” Whether you are a woman or a man you are still part of the lower classes and the fiction the feminists promote is that you can escape oppression by working for the upper classes. That’s a big fucking lie. You can’t.

11. The other thing is many feminists say “you can’t identify out of oppression” and the thing about the modern world is that we have a huge dearth of babies. The birthrates are so low that many ethnic groups including eastern europeans, South Koreans, Japanese, a lot of small ethnic groups in India etc. are basically disappearing and if it continues the world population is really going to plummet because of the anti-natalism. We have Dinks, we have single movements, we have all these people just going a

12. And with the men, I don’t see too many men talking about this dangerous trend either. The only guy talking about or doing anything about is Elon Musk. He has a big family, no one else does. Men won’t even talk about the necessity of saving their ethnic group or family from extinction.

13. So, what will probably happen in the future is that there’s going to be big mass die-offs thanks to the poisoned environment, big wars, the vaccine genocide, AIDs, drugs, suicide, etc. and the women won’t be pumping out babies because it’s not very liberating. So, instead we’ll go into the Cloud Atlas future where people will invent womb tanks to create artificial “purpose made” people. Boy is that going to be a shitshow and if the lights ever go off, humanity will then no longer be able to reproduce naturally and most of us will die.

14. So, that’s the feminist reality and the feminist future and it’s worth calling it what it is which is genocide. It’s genocide and slavery and brainwashing. It’s separating women from their powers as mothers and creators of life and giving it to a bunch of easily controlled robots. All the associated movements, the LGBTQ stuff, Dinks, Atheism, abortion, the trans movement and transhumanism. It all pushses women to not have children on the level of genocide. Put that on a T-shirt “Feminism is genocide” not a truth that most people want to hear let me tell you.

And Marika thinks it’s great. She’s all for it.

[thistle-and-thorn]

ok, more for you:

cersei/margaery 11, 24.

kendall/stewy, 22, 28.

gen/attolia, 29, 10.

gen/the magus - humor me for a sec: 30.

Hello hi you are very kind to me I have had a truly wild evening so this is very nice to come home to

Cersei/Margaery

11. What’s a song that describes their relationship? Or, what’s the song that they’ve deemed “their” song?

Mother by Meghan Trainor was my first thought 😂😂😂 I’ll have a better answer in the morning but I think it’s something jarringly pop-y and sorta sexy? I think Guys My Age by Hey Violet works well for them, too.

24. What are their favorite places to kiss on their partner(s)? What are their favorite types of kisses?

I mean. Well. 😈😈😈. But I genuinely think that Cersei refuses to kiss Marge and Marge repeatedly tries to initiate to watch her recoil. I also think that Marge generally likes to kiss Cersei in different places—nape of the neck?—to see what tenderness does?

There’s a scenario in my mind in which their roles reverse and Cersei kisses Margaery, but it’s just that one time.

Kendall/Stewy

22. How do they apologize after arguments?

“Like—about last night—“

“That shit was, like, seriously crazy.”

“Absolutely. No, I hear you. I see you.” *nervous glance up* “Ah, we good, bro?”

28. What’s something that reminds them of their partner(s)? Do they have anything on them daily as a reminder (a photo, phone background, tattoo, clothing/accessory, etc)?

They both have a bunch of weirdly sentimental frat bro stuff? I also think that Stewy has an artistic rendering of a gazelle and he doesn’t know why he gets horny/sad when he looks at it.

Gen/Attolia

10. What is something they can never agree on? How do they meet in the middle?

I mean, I know you’re not finished with the books but I think, in the end, they actually are sort of compatible on a lot of surprising things. Their internal dynamic is so interesting to me. Anyway.

I think the thing they can’t agree on can all be boiled down to religion. Like, I think Irene will never ever forgive the gods for their interference in Gen’s amputation, for the role they put her in, the danger they put him in all the time, their positions, and she will never forgive the gods for the promise of letting Eugenides fall. She is such a fearless character but there’s a moment in the final book that I think really scares her on an existential level.

And I think as much as Gen struggles with the gods, he loves and respects them. They are a part of him. And that’s the conflict.

29. Who drives and who picks out the music?

I like a Modern AU where Eugenides is afraid of cars/driving the way that he’s canonically afraid of horses. This does not stop him from being a backseat driver. But. In this AU, he retains the sexy boat captaining btw. Yeah, he picks out the music. Of course, he picks out the music. Irene hasn’t listened to radio, except for the news, for years.

Gen/Magus

30. Tell me anything you want.

There were so many great moments watching you read these books and my actual favorite was you creating this ship. You are the founder and the captain.

I think this is like…Gen’s Daddy Issues moment. Like, I think this idea that’s always in the books about Gen loving the people that hurt him….the minute the magus attacks him in the first book…that’s the moment for Gen? And I think the magus is complicated but fundamentally good but it is definitely Gen acting out his daddy issues onto him…he wants to be a brat, to be put in place, to rebel.

[incorrect-lolesports]

ok by great demand (3 notes oh this post is going places) here is absolutely every atrocity sweden man has committed against me (a girl) (not a fan or a friend but a secret third thing (an annoyance)

before we get into it tho i would like to say that this is. hm. maybe a lot! but i need to just vent this out somewhere where i KNOW it won't reach him, or anyone i care greatly about in my actual offline life. so. no snitching. Most of this is also based on the swedish songs, with the english section setting the tone and the swedish songs completing the gesamtkunstwerk.

(also i don't actually think he wants me or anything, or that it means anything. I think he just wanted to show me a bunch of his favourite songs that he thought i'd enjoy!) (But i have to wonder if he looked at his playlist, and deliberately chose these songs. If he thinks of me now, when he listens to them. If it means something.)

(and what level of parasocial relationship is it if you both make each other playlists for your birthday and if he wants to read your google docs)

anyways. atrocity write-up. btw. if you read this and want to scream with me. please. my dms are open. here or on twitter.

List of Atrocities Sweden Man has committed against me (a girl) by making me this sort of Playlist (written on my notes app during a flight)

the one song that clearly says "i'm 24, and i could love you so hard a forest would burn down from the intensity" and "i'm 39, my past haunts me, if you were here we'd be in love"

the fact that the very same song is called "Det kommer aldrig va över för mig" which the official sweden correspondant has informed me about is "It's never gonna be over for me" but only in an explicitly romantic context. whatever that means :)

the absolute deviousness of starting that fuckass playlist with not ONLY bleachers' Chinatown (after saying there's no taylor, he's created the most no-taylor taylor playlist ever), and hitting me face first with "I want a tomorrow with you, you could rip me out of my head, A girl like you could change it all"

ending the playlist with either (english part) "there's no relief, i see you in my sleep", "I'm scared that you won't be there, waiting on the other side" OR (and this is even worse!) ending it with the very explicit message "I know you want me, but you don't know what you're getting yourself into, i'm crazy, and i'm just complicated" (which is worse because it suggests that a) my obvious ass is clocked as fuck and b) ...)

The song that's like "our line always falls flat" as if that's my fault, i can't bend over backwards at every turn, and "you only call me when it rains" (female voice) cause that's just true. he only ever messages when they do badly, when they lose. he didn't care about me at all when he was popular and winning

i can't get over basically telling me to my FACE that he's too complicated to want me back and that he knows. girl. emil i'm going to [redacted]

the horny ass lana del rey in the middle, what the fuck is that about. Like after being like "we could be good together, this is my climb" he just hits me with "i'm sooo horny. i love lana del rey oh my god i'm so horny" for three songs straight. (National Anthem, White Mustang and Dark Paradise)

the random love song that's like the last bastion of actually being like, this can work out right now. With the VERY rude line of "I listen to all the songs you send me, Every song is about you. Everything is about you" incredibly rude! (I wonder if he thinks about me when he hears taylor swift?)

he loves synthesizers so much it's almost a little rude.

the song that's right after the "i listen to the playlist" song; 💗i hope you can forgive me💗 like actually girl i don't think i can. i think we should never talk again actually.

i really think he's too stupid to mean anything more than showing me a bunch of songs he likes, but i have to wonder if the songs he picked mean things. why pick these songs? why the order? Why the... why this entire year? What does it mean? I wish i could open his head and look inside, or force him to address it to my face and not just hear things in hearsay.

the song where it's like, It's never over for us two, it's never too late for the two of us to work it out"

also i like the placement of the songs, we have "hey i hope you can forgive me" into Gamora by hov1 (she is my GANGSTER wife and we do GANGSTER shit) into "i'm 24 and in love with you"

ok that's it. sorry. i promise that's the last of the illness posting. sorry guys.

(but i might update depending on how he takes the. the google doc. that he wants to read. fuck.)

can i make one more post about the playlist situation or are you guyd tired of me yet

[imagines-mha]

1-A boys and their toxic traits

this is controversial but SOMEONE had to say it

┕━━━━━━━✿━━━━━━━┙

Deku: bro. i’m so sorry first of all i feel like i need to apologise bc his CAREER is his first love forever. and his mom’s his second. You’re actually lucky to score third on the list lmao he just doesn’t have the TIME for anything but working for his corrupt hero system smh 🤦🏼‍♀️

Bakugo: i. noah fence but do i even have to explain xx. He’s the type of mf to be like “hey btw noone can know about us bc im highkey embarrassed to be seen w you so dont tell anyone”. No fucks given about how you take it. Like ok luv chile lemme just real quick hide under ur bed when ur friends r here smh x

Todoroki: ok if he had to have a toxic trait it’d just be that he finds affection SO hard to understand. Like he’ll smother you for 2 weeks and then go MIA for the other 2 it takes a LOT to teach him so u gotta have patience. Also the WORST at texting back and he replies with K. when he’s not even mad smh

Iida: okay. I know us iida stans love his uptightness- its adorable i know. But SO HELP ME GOD IF IT ISNT ANNOYING IN A RELATIONSHIP. You’ll try kiss him in his room and he’s like “y/n NOT IN THE DORMS YOU HEATHEN!!!!!! YOU IMBECILE!!!!!! YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!!” Will still also shout at you for running in the halls lmao you get no special treatment when it comes to his strictness

Kirishima: Ok controversial controversial. He’s the best boyfriend you’ll ever have...once you actually GET THERE. He doesn’t think he deserves you, like at all- so the entire crushing/mutual pining period he’s giving you the maddest mixed signals. Like one night youre ridin him like a shetland pony and the next day ur like “hey kiri youre cute” and he looks at you like youve just broke into his home and licked his bedsheets like wtf

Kaminari: DID SOMEONE SAY UNINTENTIONAL FLIRT. Me i did x. The poor thing he really doesnt mean it in THAT way when he calls jirou beautiful or says that momo’s outfit’s really hot. He just LIKES BEING NICE. Its not HIS FAULT GIRLS GET THE WRONG IDEA WHEN HE HAS A 60 DAY STREAK WITH THEM ON SNAPCHAT AND TAKES THEM OUT MINI GOLFING. He’s so dumb sometimes smh. He is really apologetic tho BUT HE STILL DOESNT UNDERSTAND

sero: he’s such a free spirit but like, not at the same time? He just wants to straight up vibe and have a good time, and if you’re someone who complains a lot/ argues he’s quick to shut you down, and he goes for blood sometimes when he argues like,,, oof. He very rarely loses his temper but he’ll hit you with those cut-deep personal insults and sigh like you’re the bane of his existence smh

Kouda: the only thing is that he kinda expects you to do all the flirting. Like he’s affectionate but he’s like “i get too flustered calling you beautiful so as a result you’ll live forever wondering if i really love you or not xox” like MANNNN. He loves ur attention too so he kinds just basks in the compliments like a happy puppy but like,,, KODA SMH UR NOT A BABY FOREVER GROW UP

ojiro: if you saw him when you needed defended in a fight no you didn’t ❤️. This mf will go MIA. Off the fuckin GRID. The second you’re in an argument with someone. He’s like “i just like keeping peace y/n i never fight with ANYONE love and peace for life 😎✌🏻✌🏻✌🏻✌🏻” but then the next week you see him arguing with kaminari front and centre in the lounge like a fuckin nativity play? If you need a big strong man to save you from getting beat up, just call kirishima instead save ur time luv

Tokoyami: bro im so sorry sometimes he makes you feel like u have the reading level of a 5 year old he’s like an alt tiktok gatekeeper ekfneidnw. If you don’t own DMs he’s JUDGING YOU. “My darling… i wrote you another poem…” *proceeds to speak with the most COMPLICATED vocabulary he’s like “i will now articulate to you my heart via song” n u just nod and pretend u have a fuckin clue

Sato: lmao what’s a diet??? eat my food or i’ll take it personal. Can’t get it through his head when you tell him youre only not eating every damn cake and muffin he makes because you don’t wanna break out in acne/ get unhealthy. Like this man will give you the most HURT look and be like “b-but y/n...i made them just for you…” he’ll NEVER understand

Aoyama: “look at beautiful specimen in the mirror y/n…” he says, carressing your arms and kissing your temples, “oh- and you’re here too!” smh he has a marvellous time reminding YOU how lucky YOU are to be with him, like you werent the one to save him from his lonely little life and pick all his spirits off the ground,,, he’s so vain ay the worst of times

Shouji: be honest w u he’s not toxic at all the only toxic thing about shouji mezo that’s toxic is the little bitch who cried when they saw his face and made him cover it up forever ugh

[ichayalovesyou]

Why Does God Need A Starship? (Live Reaction):

I always thought Sybok was cool and interesting and NOW I’m sure! You know it’s times like these that I’m grateful I kinda came back into the Star Trek fandom on my own, because I don’t have to deal with Opinions of older/louder Trekkies. This one kinda has a lukewarm reputation but I’m getting the vibe that I’ll genuinely enjoy it.

Yet again Bones is serving up some LOOKS damn! Look at these elder gays! Spock has rocket boots, amazing. “Because it’s there” and then falling off the goddamn mountain is such a James Tiberius Kirk thing to do 😂 “HI BONES!” These guys omfg. OH MY GOD SO WE DO SEE CAITIANS OUTSIDE THE CARTOONS?? Hell yeah! Also pole dancing to no music, is... weird. Lmao. Also okay I’m sorry Sybok is cool! Sybok is cool and interesting and I really like him! (Not morally obviously dude is shady as all fuck, but a cool dude nontheless!) Always fascinated by Cult Leader type villains, especially when they point out valid criticisms about the society from which they came (important distinction is that the CAUSE is not vilified, but the person and their means, something M****l has largely forgotten)

Awww I may ship Hikura, but Uhura & Scotty are also cute as hell!! Awwwwwww!!!! Old married couples can be so freaking cute. Chekov & Sulu are LOST ohhhh my god this is hilarious, these two idiots. Also can we talk about how Koenig’s eyebrows are slowly gaining sentience and Takei aged like fine wine? Lol. THE HOLY TRINITY OF ELDER GAYS ARE CAMPINGGGG! I’m- oh my god they’re so cute. “Marshmelon” this is cute as hell oh my god. They’re indulging and messing with Spock at the same time I’m dead! They’re singing ohh my god this gonna give me cavities with how sweet it is!!!

This Klingon dude is frickin ROCKING the eyeliner! Bruhhhh was the frickin spotlight necessary! Leave the gays alone SHHHH they’re SLEEPING!! Lmao. Yo I’ll be real this movie starts incredibly slowly but I seriously do not mind, it’s relaxing to not have to worry about missing important details if you look away for a second, it’s nice. WAIT? Does Jim’s shirt say GOT MILK?!!? Oh no, it says go climb a rock, oh thank god [“fatty milkers” flashbacks]

Seriously McCoy is just radiating so much old southern lady/gay energy in this movie and I love it so freaking much “if you ask me (and you haven’t) this is a horrible idea” he sounds like my North Carolina living Meemaw. Wow you can see Spock low-key taking psychic damage from seeing Sybok 😲 V’tosh Ka’tur of the highest order huh? Still disturbing that his government literally cast him out, that’s a red flag 😬. What happened with Sybok is probably a lot of why Spock was pressured to be as Vulcan as he was, I’m sure Sybok was a massive scandal/shame for Sarek, and knowing him, he’d end up making that his kids’ problem not his 🙄

Oh neat!! Chekov is in the in the captain’s chair. Oh this is the song they replaced Nichols’s voice for 😤 but also GIRL THAT WAS BADASS AND THAT SONG WAS A BOP! Quick question, wow these “alien” horses are somehow even worse than the unicorn dog (also it’s a desert planet, wouldn’t it be better to have, like, alien camels or something?) This dude’s Klingon is freakin impeccable btw! He’s really got the vibe down! Jim did you forget how fuckin bananas strong Vulcans are??? Sybok went like 😡☹️ when Spock pointed that laser rifle at him 😂😂😂 again even tho I know Scotty and Uhura are married but it’s scenes like getting held hostage right there where they radiate such POWER COUPLE energy GAWD! 🤩

Stay out of this Bones we’re having a lover’s quarrel! Jim is taking fucking psychic damage from this entire conversation lol. Okayyyy whatever Sybok is doing is definitely some kind of mind control type thing, that shit is creepy af no thank youuuuuu (spores anyone?). Oh my god Spock & Jim are so married lmao, that “I’m sorry” Vulcan kiss in the brig man Aw. (Oh man Magic’s of mega-tsu got devani mixed by that comment lame!) SCOTTYYYYYY!! YAS!

Yay rocket boot glomp! Lmfao! Sybok needs to brush up on his earth history Columbus did NOT figure out the world is round 🙄 Ah Scotty being like “listen, you’re not okay rn so I’m not really down for whatever you think you wanna do right now it can wait until you’re right in the head again” and they could’ve not done that and it would’ve been creepy (especially by today’s standards) but they didn’t! And that was awesome!

Bones being skeptical and has every right to be! He’s faced down would be gods and would-be messiahs before! Also I’ve seen people judge Bones for being the first to cave but Sybok totally did that shit to him without consent! He didn’t go back on his beliefs, Sybok forced him to! BONES PROTECTION SQUAD IS HERE AND ITS ME! Oh Bones, man, poor babeyyyy (fuck Sybok!) 😭😭😭 OH MY GOD BONESSSSSS Sybok leave him alone! Goddamnit! Leave him alone!

I think Jim can see Spock’s Sybok induced vision cuz they’re ✨Bonded✨ (it didn’t seem like they could see Bones’s, other than what Bones was doing). JIM KNOWS SO MUCH BETTER! ITS HOW HE BEAT THE SPORES ITS HIS CORE! I UNDERSTAND AND LOVE HIM FOR IT!!! Spock 😍😍😍 he’s like, you’re bullshit happiness pill doesn’t work on me cuz I am whole for the first time in my life, and I love my husband, and I already learned my lesson decades ago 💚🖖🏻💚 (who knew how important the character development from This Side of Paradise AND Return To Tommorow would be??? Hell yeah!)

I love Scotty so much 🥰 hardcore badass Hufflepuff from beginning to end! Also I hope Sybok appears in SNW that could be really really interesting if they do it right! ITS GOD (derogatory) REVERE HIM! Oh here comes that legendary question!! “What dies God need with a starship?” Red flag don’t call Jim a creature! Oh shit god has laxer eyes oh no lmao! Bones snaps out of whatever Sybok did to him when “God” hurts his friends and we LOVE HIM FOR ITTTT! Awww Spock & Sybok and be saaaaad, oh shit! Into the lightning to fight a mirror of yourself like Lazarus in that one episode!

OH SHIT THE KLINGONS ARE HERE! Oh damn Spock just swore a cuss the right way, at a Klingon General no less! General dude just went “caotain tell Kirk you are sorry!” LMAO! NOT IN FRONT OF THE KLINGONS 😂😂😂😍 KISS DAMNIT!! God this whole after scene is so good, maybe the god is the friends we made along the way. “I lost a brother once” you also lost SAM dummy, I know you were just telling Spock you love him but still. SHUT UP SPOCK IS PLAYING ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT ON HIS LYRE??

Okay, seriously, I unironically love this movie, it might be my favorite out of the ones I’ve seen so far actually. TMP felt like the movies getting their sea legs, but it was slow and messy, it wasn’t as thought provoking as it wanted to be (aside from Spock’s wonderful arc in that film). WoK & TSFS are amazing for drama and angst and Spirk content, but they weren’t really asking the big questions Star Trek is wonderful for. Then The Voyage Home is just plain silly and fun and wholesome. But this, this movie had depth! The whole premise is “what is god and is there is one?” I LOVE that as someone who has a very complicated relationship with spirituality. I also already loved the TOS episodes This Side of Paradise, Return To Tomorrow, The Omega Glory and The Way To Eden, and this movie had the best of those concepts! Sybok was such a fascinating antagonist/anti-hero and I hope we get to see him explored more on screen one day, even if it’s just through Discovery/SNW flashbacks. It may have started off slow and it’s not without its flaws but this felt like the Star Trekkiest TOS Star Trek movie so far!

[laora-inn]

Supernatural - Some speculations about the last 7 episodes of 15th season

Well, after 2 trailers, episodes descriptions on IMDB and some unfinished plot-lines of SPN story I’d like to share my own speculations. Some of them are definitely wrong. 

Destiel positive, happy end positive, don’t like - don’t read. 

Season 15 | Episode 14. Last Holiday

A filler - that’s how we anime fans call episodes which have no deal with the main plotline, though can contain some interesting moments and nuances. In “Supernatural” these episodes usually have no Cas in them. Sometimes they are very good... but mostly not. They are “just for fun”, and fans enjoy them, because they can be really funny. No angst.

Like this one - no angst, no Cas, a wood nymph who looks like Mary Poppins to me (or Mrs. Marple whatever). Some British origin of the character. 

That’s the episode which shots with Dean in purple nightgown are from (trailer short version).

I suppose the shot with Dean, Sam and Jack flying in the air could also be here from. But maybe not.

I don’t know where Cas may be. His absence should be explained to us in some way. In episode 10th he was missing because of talking to the angels. What’s now? Some preparations for the next Jack's trial? 

In this episode Dean should come closer to Jack’s forgiving.

Season 15 | Episode 15. Gimme Shelter

I have NO IDEA what this episode is about. Maybe the next trial for Jack? Or not?

I think the shot from the last trailer with Cas protecting Jack on the truck bed is from this episode. Also, some tortured person on the bed with the “lust” written above could be from it. 

And what about Sam and Dean? Where are they? 

I think they may have their own journey here, separate from Cas and Jack. Possibly the epic shots with them entering some building are this episode from. Possibly not. 

Season 15 | Episode 16. Drag Me Away (From You)

I don’t like this episode title. It looks like Destiel mocking to me - maybe, I just don’t have enough faith. I want to trust SPN writers but can’t. Somebody help me to believe, we all need that now! :)

THE ONLY episode in ALL THE SHOW except this one that had brackets in the title was 12x12, Stuck in the Middle (With You). Yahoo. 

Obviously, 12x12 was a parody to the Reservoir Dogs, a movie by Quentin Tarantino. Parody in a good sense of this word, but still. The plotline, the scenes (oh, this lunch scene from different points of view!), the scenes’ order, the roles, though changed - all of them. In case you didn’t watch Reservoir Dogs, just go and watch it, and then re-watch 12x12. You will understand. 

"Stuck in the Middle with You" is Stealers Wheel song which was in the OST of this Tarantino’s movie. This allusion should deal with boys’ and Mary relationship - because it’s her who betrayed them involuntarily, and now they are stuck in the middle with her. 

But somehow this episode title also deals with Destiel relationship. Maybe ‘cause that’s Cas who is dying, not Mary. Maybe ‘cause even on his deathbed he doesn’t confess something important - not about his betrayal, there was no one, but about his feelings. He says "I love you”, but then adds “I love all of you”, and Dean is literally stuck in the middle with Cas here. 

Back to the brackets in the episodes titles. Because of them I suppose that 12x12 and 15x16 could be connected. But how exactly?! That’s the question. I want them badly to be connected in Destiel way, but know too little. 

Back then I supposed that Dean could be dying in this episode and it would be his turn to confess something to Cas. But now I don’t know if there will be Cas in this episode at all, I just don’t have enough information. 

I hope he will. 

Btw, the words “Drag Me Away (From You)” are in Toto’s song “Africa”. And in case you didn’t know, in 2018 this song was used for half-an-hour Destiel video made by fan here. It covers ALL the Destiel moments then far. Link for this video is in Supernatural wiki, in the Destiel article. Half an hour, 10 repeats of the song, author’s comment: 

Along the way it stopped being funny and started getting insulting because this has been a literal decade (as of 2018 the vid features seasons 4-13) and the show has explored ALL of the tropes and yet and yet and yet...

I mean the fangirl shipper part of me also loves it. And then I get mad because I love it. I have a very complicated relationship with Supernatural but that's okay.

Have you heard the good news about Tragic Widow Dean?

TLDR: Have a supercut of all the DeanCas stuff set to Toto's Africa.

We can speculate a bit about this fact, but the truth is we know only about young Sam and Dean, who certainly will be in this episode. 

I think shots with Billie talking to Dean from the last trailer also belong to this episode, as well as shots with young Dean with Samulet, who is a ghost now. But these assumptions could be totally wrong. 

What circumstances will take us to the young Sam and Dean? Time travelling? Flashbacks? The parallel world?

Personally I think it will be the third option. Because how the hell young Dean can be a ghost in “our” universe? Unless it’s not Dean, though I doubt it. But if it’s not Dean, it can be a flashback, you know, with the young boys. Yep? 

We’ll wait and see.

I don’t think that Sam’s appreciative words to Dean refer to this episode. 

Also I don’t think Sam is going to sacrifice himself AGAIN (I’ve heard such an opinion). But maybe it’s my hope that makes me think in a wrong way.

Season 15 | Episode 17. Unity

I think some of Chuck’s shots are from this episode. Maybe the red lights in the bunker too. Maybe not. 

There also should be Amara and some angels. I saw Uriel in the cast! Maybe there also be some light lit on the all situation in Heaven now, when Jack made new angels. 

Some interaction between all of them + Sam, Dean, Cas and Jack should take place. Here the shot with sigil could be taken from. 

What side the angels will take? How it happened that Uriel is alive? Was he resurrected by Chuck or Amara? What plans does Amara have, how is she planning to deal with Chuck?

And what’s for Naomi? Will she come back or not? I think she won’t, not in this episode for sure, and I’m already disappointed ‘cause you know, she should be alive. Dumah said she is. For me Naomi is an important figure considering Destiel, and I think she’d be the best Heaven runner. 

All in all, in this episode should happen something that will make Cas happy. I suppose by the end of 15x17 or in the beginning of 15x18 they all will be sure that they have won the game, and Dean will forgive Jack for Mary.

The episode title may refer to angels’, Winchesters’ and Amara unity. 

Season 15 | Episode 18. Despair

Well, in Supernatural wiki I also saw “The Truth” title for this episode. 

Most of us are convinced that in this episode Cas will tell Dean about his deal with the Empty and will be taken by it. I believe the same. 

I think shot with Billie knocking with her hand rotten belongs to this episode. 

I have some doubts, but also think a shot with Dean leaning on Cas is from here. 

I’m sure that “You fought for this whole world” and Dean’s crying scene belong to this episode. ‘Cause you know. Despair. And the truth - about Cas’s deal and possibly about their fake win. 

Billie’s with her scythe and bunker intrusion symbols could also be from here (or from one the previous episodes ends, especially for Billie - as a cliffhanger). And it should be the case for Sam and Jack, I suppose. Because there is no other way for Dean and Cas to face Cas’s deal with just two of them. 

Destiel confession will be here, in more explicit form that it could be in 15x16, because there will be A TALK, but I don’t think we’ll see something real explicit. 

Maybe, Dean’ll say he loves Cas. Maybe not. I’m sure only about the fact that we’ll cry by the end of this episode. And that will be AN UGLY CRYING, just as Jensen said.

Well, maybe there will be a hint that Cas can be brought back, but I think it won’t. So prepare yourselves, my friends. 

Season 15 | Episode 19. Inherit the Earth

Here I think Sam’s appreciative words to Dean are taken from. They are definitely comforting. ‘Cause you know, Cas is dead, Chuck is alive. Possibly Cas was in his way and Chuck erased him by making him believe in their win.

I also think Dean’s crying words “this whole mission, saving the world” belong to this episode and will be in conversation with Sam. 

They still need to fight Chuck, and Jack is still alive. Here Michael will appear and helps. And there is one moment Sergey mentioned in 15x07, about the key to the Death’s library. He even described what it looks like! Cas heard that as well as Eileen. Well, if Cas is taken, then Eileen should return to the Winchesters, maybe with Sam and Jack, or just tell them about this key. 

I don’t know what they are going to do after. Open this library? How? Find how to kill God? Or not? Will they try to save Cas?

I think they will not talk about Cas’s saving. And he will be dead in this episode for sure.

Also I think they’ll deal with God in this episode, one way or another.

Season 15 | Episode 20. Carry On

This is a land of unlimited speculation!

I hope Dean’ll have Cas back by the end of episode. I think Cas’ll save himself from the Empty, ‘cause, you know, he has a big goal there. The Empty tortures all the dead angels and demons, as far as we know. It should be fixed - Cas’s already made a promise to Ruby. And we know that Cas has no problem with ruining something and messing it up - he is basically THE GREAT TRICKSTER of this show. 

Rebelling against Heaven and ruining angels’ plans? Check. Stopping Apocalypse? Check. Opening Purgatory? Check. Becoming a new God? Check. Bringing the Leviathans? Check. Casting all the angels out of Heaven and burning their wings? Check. Becoming human? Check. Becoming an angel by devouring other angels’ grace? Check. Getting an army of angels? Check. Giving up this army for one human? Check. Kidnapping angels’ prisoner? Check. Letting Lucifer in? Check. Helping “an abomination”, Devil’s son, to be born? Check. Annoying Empty so much that it brought him back to life? Check. Making a deal with the Empty? Check. 

It’s very dangerous to mess with Cas, you just don’t know what he could do for the greater good, and yep, in some way Dean was right when he said that Cas is “something that’s always going wrong”. So I think the Empty is in trouble here, not vice versa.  

Also, there is one more thing that bothers me. When Nick in 14th season was praying to Lucifer, he woke him up in the Empty. Theoretically, Lucifer can be awake by now. It could be a dead end, but still. Lucifer’s “true face” is similar to the Empty’s, sooo... 

I don’t know what to think about it and the fact that Nick could reach Lucifer and return him from the Empty, so let’s move on.  

I hope for the happy end for Sam (maybe with Eileen) and for all the hunters we know. They are family. 

NO MCD here! If someone’ll die - they shouldn’t be Sam, Dean or Cas. I don’t want to see Eileen’s death either. I don’t know what about Jack. I don’t want him to die, but he is 100% supernatural being, and I am not sure what it means for him to die. 

Monsters should stay, hunters should hunt them. We’ll see that the “family business” thrives.    

There should be an order on the all levels - in Heaven, Hell and on Earth. There should be the new Death - of they should return Billie. Rowena running the Hell would be perfect. Wonder if Naomi could run Heaven. Maybe it will be Chuck? If he will be redeemed. Or Michael. 

I don’t know what’s for the Empty and Amara. 

I don’t know what the end for Jack will be. I’d like he will be alive, but I just don’t know. He can’t be a human. That will be right thing for Cas, but not for Jack. 

I hope for Destiel endgame, as well as for Sam/Eileen. Cas should become a human, maybe, with some supernatural skills left.   

I doubt that we have proper scenes of these ships together or Cas’ humanity. Just hints. But they can be very obvious - especially if we’ll see Dean’s reaction to Cas’s returning. 

So, I hope to see them. 

But, as I said, it's a land of unlimited speculation. We’ll wait and see. 

What else should be resolved:

- Kevin can’t stay a ghost! It’s my main point here. He also can’t go to Hell. What will happen with him and in which episode? I don’t know. I just hope they won’t forget about him. 

- There is the shot with Bobby from? 15x20? He should be somewhere. 

- Also, there should be Charlie in this season unless something’s changed. Where is she?

- What are they going to do with alternative!Winchesters from 15x13? They will rest? They will make another HunterCorp? They will be gone?! Come on, something needs to be done with them! Of course, they are not so important here, so the writers can forget about them, but still, I’m interested.

What am I going to do:

I'm going to watch all the last episodes of the season. AND THEN, if there will be no happy end for the Winchester boys and Cas won’t be with them, I'm going to rebel. :) In every possible way - petitions, letters, actions etc. We are grown-up people here. We can fight for our rights, and it's my crucial right - to be happy about my favorite show ending. :) 

__________________

Feel free to ask me anything or to comment. My ask is working!

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

Hey, I started reading Female General Elder Princess because I got the link from your blog and I wanted some lesbian historical romance. I've just begun reading it, but I already love it! ❤️❤️❤️

Btw, do you have any other recs for translated novels/web novels??

Glad you’re enjoying FGEP :3 

I have not read as many webnovels as I’d like to say I have, but I’ve got other recs, definitely. I hope you like these!

Wiegenlied of Green

This novel is part of a larger series by the Japanese song writer and producer mothy, called the Story of Evil. The Story of Evil is part of a larger series called the Evillious Chronicles, also by mothy. I’d actually recommend the EC as a whole, it’s great despite its flaws, but Wiegenlied of Green essentially centers on two of the universe’s characters, Michaela and Clarith. It’s about how they meet and how their (eventually romantic) relationship develops around each other, as they’re both quite different people. Clarith is a kind person but shunned and ostracized for her Netsuma heritage, which was connected in a bad way to another event earlier in the universe’s history. As a result, she has extremely low self-esteem. Michaela on the other hand was originally an immortal forest spirit in the form of a robin, but she takes the form of a human in order to assist a sorceress. Because of her origins and true nature, Michaela lacks understanding about human emotions, both the good and the bad, and as a result finds herself pretty baffled living among humans. So when the two of them meet… 

There’s other elements and plots, as the Evillious Chronicles universe is much wider, but at its core Wiegenlied of Green is Michaela and Clarith’s story. The original is in Japanese (obv), but it’s fully translated to English here. The prose can get a little awkward due to converting between languages, but it’s definitely not incomprehensible. AND MICHAELA MARRY ME. 

(A side note, but mothy actually made two songs about the plot of Wiegenlied of Green as well, even though it cuts out a lot of the novel’s storyline. One is from Clarith’s perspective, called Daughter of White in reference to Clarith’s white hair as a Netsuma, and the other is from Michaela’s perspective, called Maiden of the Tree: Thousand-Year Wiegenlied, in reference to her original status as a spirit of the forest. I wouldn’t watch either of their videos or read any translations of them until after I’ve finished the novel, though, since they both have spoilers.) 

Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun

(I’m gonna go with the English title here, because the Chinese title is pretty long, to the point that most people call it 2ha or Erha.) This is a Chinese danmei novel, by the author Meatbun Doesn’t Eat Meat. Its protagonist is Mo Ran, who became tyrannical emperor after losing his first love, and killed a bunch of people. Eventually, he committed suicide, only to wake up and find that he’s traveled back in time to when he was fifteen years old, before his first love died. This was my first danmei novel, and god. It has some really interesting themes about justice, redemption, atonement, morality, forgiveness, etc. The title may sound childish, but I hurt myself reading it. I think the strength of 2ha is that the author expresses raw emotions so well that I can’t help coming back, and she gets you so invested in all the characters. Massive trigger warning, though, for r/pe, abuse, explicit sex, and gore. Also, Chu Wanning, the main love interest/deuteragonist, is Mo Ran’s shizun, or teacher. Although this is handled carefully by the story, it still might be off-putting.

Here’s a link to translations in various languages; as far as I know, there’s no full human translation into English. The machine translations are understandable, but they also might come across as awkward. I’d say it’s still more than  worth it, though.

Tian Guan Ci Fu

The English title is Heaven’s Official Blessing. This is also Chinese danmei web novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. It’s protagonist, Xie Lian, is the crown prince of the kingdom Xianle, who ascended to the status of a god at age seventeen due to his cultivation but ended up being banished because of, ahem, circumstances. The main love interest and deuteragonist is Hua Cheng, who is… it’s complicated. As for its strengths, Tian Guan Ci Fu is just great all around, honestly. The themes are tight and consistent, the characters are wonderful (I’m extremely in love with Yushi Huang), and the worldbuilding is stellar. Not to mention, the main couple has me screaming into my pillow every moment of every day. 

The story is fully translated to English here. MXTX, the author, has also written other web novels that I haven’t read (yet), but I’ve heard amazing things about all of them. One is Mo Dao Zu Shi (“Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation”), the source material for the TV show The Untamed, which you might have seen stuff about. The other is Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, which is also apparently really good. 

Wiegenlied, 2ha, and TGCF are the only ones I can come up with so far, but I have a huge to-read list of webnovels. Of course I can’t recommend them since I haven’t read them yet, but here they are if you want to read more:

Night Flowers Shirking From the Light of the Sun

Qiang Jin Jiu

Sha Po Lang

Qi Ye

The Noble Consort’s Pet Empress

Lantern: Reflection of the Peach Blossoms

Qian Qiu

My Princess Has Been Reborn

[andhumanslovedstories]

Recent country songs that have made me literally gay gasp as a gay woman, in order of how much they make me want to write an essay on gender and queerness

HONORARY MENTION BUT JUST BECAUSE I THINK THIS IS TECHNICALLY AMERICANA NOT COUNTRY (but genre is fake) AND THIS SONG ISN’T RECENT (2014 and I’ve been listening to it faithfully since then) BUT I ONLY RECENTLY LEARNED IT’S A COVER AND THAT’S MADE ME RECONTEXTUALIZE IT: “Murder in the City” by Brandi Carlile, a cover of The Avett Brothers where she changed the words “make sure my sister knows I loved her/make sure my mother knows the same” to “make sure my wife knows that I love her/make sure my daughter knows the same” which fucking. fucking gets me. Especially since the first time that I heard this song, I assumed it was from a man’s point of view because of that line, and then I learned that Brandi Carlile is a lesbian and I was caught up in my foolish heteronormitivity, and then I learned it was a cover and thought oh okay I guess the song is originally from a man’s pov and it’s cool she covered, and then I learned she changed those lines to make a song that already feels deeply personal to her to explicitly include her love for a woman and the family they’ve made together. And that’s just. It’s all just a lot. 

3) “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” by Miranda Lambert featuring Maren Morris, Elle King, Ashley McBryde, Tenille Townes and Caylee Hammack, because the first time it came up on my spotify, I saw the title and was like “hey dope I like this song” and then I heard the first line was still “I must have been through about a million girls” and I realized none of the words or pronouns were getting changed and I was getting the song I’ve always wanted and deserved: a high production value, high energy, big girl group tribute to being a lesbian fuckboy who Fooled Around And, oops can you believe it, Fell in Love. 

2) “If She Ever Leaves Me” by The Highwomen, sung by Brandi Carlile who is, as mentioned, lesbian, but since I’m apparently still chugging my comp het juice, I was still trying to figure out if this song--a classic “hey buddy keep walking, she’s my girl and she’s not interested” song with an interesting element of the singer being aware the relationship might not last anyway--was gonna be explicitly queer. And then there’s the line, “That's too much cologne, she likes perfume,” and I was like OH HOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!! 

This is immediately followed by the lines “I’ve loved her in secret/I’ve loved her out loud” which is also deliciously queer in this context, with this singer and that juxtaposition, but the line that really fucking got me is my favorite of the song: “If she ever leaves, it's gonna be for a woman with more time.” This is two women in a complicated relationship. This isn’t just a “keep walking, cowboy” song, it’s a song that uses that framework to suggest a whole ass “Finishing the Hat”** relationship, and that’s so interesting to me. Like a song that isn’t just explicitly about two women in love but one that conveys very quickly a rich history between the two of them. And in a genre where the line “Kiss lots of boys, kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into” was revolutionary representation.

(Fun fact, “Follow Your Arrow” was partially written by Brandy Clarke, another country lesbian! Another fun fact, so is basically every other good country song. Brandy Clark, please write a big lesbian country anthem, I know it will immediately kill me on impact.) 

To quote one youtube comment, “”lesbians how we feeling??” and to answer by quoting some others, “As a closeted baby gay in the 90s, who was into country, this song would have changed my life”, “I just teared up.  So many happy tears, as a gay woman raised on country music,  this is something that's definitely been needed.  Thank you Brandi. Thank you highwomen”, “This song means more than I can say in a youtube comment”, and “Lesbians needed this song :)”

It’s me. I’m lesbians. 

**ANOTHER HONORARY MENTION EXCEPT IT ISN’T RECENT AND IT ISN’T COUNTRY SO I GUESS THIS IS JUST A MENTION, BUT I AM INTERESTED IN THIS SONG--“Finishing the Hat” by Kelli O’Hara. A very good Sondheim joint, that’s about making art, the costs of its obsessive and exclusive nature and the incomparable pleasure of putting something into the world that wasn’t there before. It’s such a traditionally male narrative that I’m thrilled to find a wonderful female cover of it. I’m not even fussed about her changing the gender from the lover who won’t wait for the artist (except that the shift from “woman” to “one man” sounds so clunky) because there’s value turning this song into a lament of the men who won’t love artistic women. But I do also wish she’d also recorded a version that kept the original gender so it would be gay. OKAY BROADWAY TANGENT OVER, BACK TO COUNTRY. 

1) “Highwomen” by The Highwomen, ft. Yola and Sheryl Crow. I can’t even express the full body chills the first time I heard this. Like repeated, multiple chills renewed at every verse of the song. This really closely parallels my experience with “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” up there, because when I started it I was like “oh dope I know what this cover will be” and then the lyrics started and I was like “OH MY GOD I DIDN’T.” In the case of “Fooled Around” it’s because I was amazed that they kept the original words. In the case of “Highwomen” I fucking transcended because they changed them. 

So I grew up on Johnny Cash, obsessed with a couple of his albums but largely with a CD I had of his greatest hits. (Ask me how many times I listened to the shoeshine boy song. Hundreds. Johnny Cash told me to get rhythm and I got it.) And my FAVORITE was “Highwayman” from the country supergroup he was in, The Highwaymen. The concept of the song is that each of the four men sing a verse about a man from the past and how he died. It’s very good. The line “They buried me in that grey tomb that knows no sound” used to scare the shit out of me. I didn’t expect to have a song that targets so specifically my fear of being buried alive in wet concrete. 

(If you haven’t heard the song, by the way, listen to this version to properly appreciate it as a piece of music. If you have, watch the fucking music video holy shit this is a work of art oh my GOD.) 

So I was predisposed to love this cover before I even heard it. But then I heard it. And they rewrote the song to be about historical women. And it’s like. There’s layers here okay. 

Neither the Highwaymen nor the Highwomen are signing about famous people. This isn’t a Great Man tour of history, it’s about dam builders and sailors and preachers and mothers and Freedom Riders and also Johnny Cash who flies a starship across the universe, as you do. 

In the 1986 version, it’s a song about the continuity of life--the repeated idea is “I am still alive, I’m still here, I come back again and again in different forms.” The highwayman is all the men in the song. He reincarnates. The song is past, present, future. The title is singular, masculine. The same soul, expressed through multiple voices, multiple lives. 

In the 2019 version, the title is plural, feminine. Highwomen. This song is about women. Each verse asserts the same motif as the 1986 version--“I may not have survived but I am still alive”--but there is no implication of reincarnation. Each woman is her own woman. This version has a final verse that the previous versions lacks. The singers harmonize. It’s not a song where one voice replaces  another, the story of this One Man progressing through time. It ends in a chorus of women saying “We are still alive.” 

We are The Highwomen Singing stories still untold We carry the sons you can only hold We are the daughters of the silent generations You sent our hearts to die alone in foreign nations They may return to us as tiny drops of rain But we will still remain

And we'll come back again and again and again And again and again We'll come back again and again and again And again and again 

Another fun fact! The first time I heard them sing “We are the daughters of the silent generations” I died! But luckily I came back again and again and again.  

This is a song about the continuity of history. It asserts that women’s historical lives matter and that they continue to matter, long after they died. This is a song about legacy as well, the legacy of nameless women who worked to protect the ones they loved and make the world better. They don’t die by chance. They are all hunted down by political violence, by racism, by misogyny, for stepping outside their prescribed roles. But, as Yola (who btw fucking CRUSHES THE VOCALS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????? HOLY SHIT MA’AM) sings as a murdered Freedom Rider, she’d take that ride again. And at the end of the song, she joins the chorus but does not disappear into it. Her voice rises up out of crowd. And the crowd calls itself “we”. These women are united but not subsumed into being One Woman. This is about Women. 

And then, outside the song itself, there’s the history of this song about history. It’s originally by Jimmy Webb and was covered by Glenn Campbell. This cover inspired the name of the supergroup that covered it, the group with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and my man Johnny Cash. And it’s like holy shit! What an amazing group to collaborate! Hot damn! 

Then, it’s 2019 and here’s The Highwomen with Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires. The name is obviously riffing on The Highwaymen. Shires set out to form the group in direct response to the lack of female country artists on the radio and at festivals. And they name themselves after a country supergroup, and they put out this song, a song connected to massive names in country music, and they center all of this on women and womanhood and the right of women to be counted in history and to make history and to talk about the ways we have mistreated and marginalized women, in a group that started because one woman was like hey! we’re mistreating and marginalizing women! 

I just think this is neat! I think there’s a lot here we could unpack! But this post is 100 times longer than I was planning and work starts in a bit so uh I’m gonna go get dressed and listen to The Highwomen on repeat for the next hour, “Heaven is a Honky Tonk” is another fucking bop that improves on the original, it would be dope if they’d collab with Rhiannon Giddens, okay byyyyyyyye 

[sol1056]

wuxia/xianxia: a loose and somewhat second-hand introduction to the genre, pt1

Sorry for the unconventional q, but i keep seeing Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation everywhere and I kinda want to get into it but a) don't know where to start (web series? live action adaptation?? wait how many are there!) and b) i don't really "get" wuxia / xianxia, that sorta stuff, i find it really hard to cross that cultural barrier and chinese mentality seems very alien. (it's not that i have no experience w different mentalities but chinese in particular is v hard to grasp w/o sources).

So if you have the time and patience, I'd love to hear a summary of it (like, a coherent summary bc all i get on the wikis is a shower of names and concepts that don't make sense to me) and perhaps some "intro for dummies" abt the relevant parts of chinese history and mentality tied to it? not just the cultivation / buddhist part but also re: familial relationships, philosophy and all that. (v brief and low effort of course) Thank you and sorry for bothering you!

("brief and low effort" referring to what I'm asking from you, not to what I need for me - as in i asked for it so i'm more than ready for a complicated essay, but you can write with as much detail as you like, I don't want to ask for some sort of comprehensive tome)

Okay first, you do realize that if you want “brief and low” for anything, you’re asking the wrong person? I was a philosophy major. brief got drilled out of me a long time ago. 

Second... well, explaining what makes The Untamed / Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (mdzs for short, from the chinese title, Mo Dao Zu Shi) such a standout story does require understanding some of the wuxia conventions it subverts -- as well as some that it plays straight (so to speak) very, very well. 

I figure the best approach (again, sadly not brief) is to first get a handle on the genre of wuxia. Gonna break this post into two, so you’re not reading in a single three-hour stretch or something. I’ll do a follow-up about mdzs, to hopefully make it a bit more accessible for you. 

before I do that, let me first say: I didn’t grow up with this genre, so there’s going to be parts that I may miscast unintentionally. for an insider’s view, my go-to voices are @guzhuangheaven, @atthewaterside, @dramatic-gwynne, @the50-person and @drunkensword. if any of them are reading this and can point to more/other/better voices, please do.

I have three analogies -- like cultural doorways --  and like all analogies, they break down when you get into the finer details. In the broad strokes, though, they mostly work, and if nothing else, hopefully they’ll demonstrate that wuxia may be a chinese-specific version, but part of a storytelling tradition that’s nearly universal.

The three doorways are: the american wild west, the samurai era, and the british arthurian romances. And, in a tangential way, the regency period in the romance genre. 

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 

The term ‘wuxia’ can be translated several ways, but I prefer ‘martial chivalry’. Most wuxia takes place in the jianghu, a harder term to unpack. Generally, though, ‘the jianghu’ has connotations not all that different from what americans mean when they reference the wild west. 

More of a concept than a physical place, the jianghu (like the ‘wild’ west) exists beyond the reach of the law and/or civilization. It’s occupied by a diverse cast of farmers, merchants, beggars, and so on, but also by outlaws, gangs, hermits, pretty much all those who don’t like the suffocating nature of the civilized world, for whatever reason. It’s not a lawless place (except to outsiders); it does have laws, but those are only unto itself. 

So, jianghu is a world to itself, for the most part -- which also makes it kind of timeless. Tang dynasty, Song dynasty, Ming dynasty, it could be any of them and all of them and none of them. Just as the heyday of the cowboys and the cattle drives was barely a decade long, a culture’s romanticized history stretches into lifetimes that exist separate from any date you could pin down on a calendar. 

The average wuxia protagonist would fit in reasonably well as knight errants in an arthurian romance, with one important detail in difference: they’re rarely aristocrats. Wuxia protagonists are just as likely (if not more so) to be lower-born, whether the child of farmers, or servants, some common caste. 

This is where wuxia diverges from the british and japanese traditions, which have a bit more noblesse oblige going on (knights and samurai both being upper-class types). Even ‘aristocratic’ characters tend to be so only within the jianghu -- sort of like the way a territory’s elected leader in the wild west would’ve had no pull in Washington, given they weren’t from a fully-recognized state. 

Wuxia does often have politics, between competing sects (think schools of learning), but that political infighting is independent of the capital’s rules or wishes. A lot of stories -- in the rare cases the topic even comes up -- tends to speak of ‘the capital’ in disparaging terms. 

That’s not to say wuxia is all about the flat social systems (it’s definitely not), but most commonly a rank implies some level of competence/study. The title of sect leader isn’t granted, it's earned. Children inherit, but it’s also a common storyline to have an heir with no skills (who then goes through all the trials and tribulations to finally level up and earn that position in turn).

What makes wuxia hard to grasp is its vernacular: the conventions that form the backbone that make something recognizably ‘wuxia’ and not just ‘historical drama set on a frontier in a loosely-defined time period’. 

Frex: in a Wild West story, convention is two gunfighters at opposite ends of the street, and at least one of them is wearing a holster tied to his leg with string in a way that no real gunfighter wore, ever, but Hollywood came up with the idea and now it’s a permanent part of our imagination. In the arthurian romances,  convention is carrying the token of one’s lady love (a distant, untouchable figure who rarely appears on-page), or meeting the unnamed knight in black on the jousting field. Convention are the samurai who’ll die for their lord’s honor, always touchy and prickly at the first sign of disrespect. 

These are things granted the most remarkable gravity, that to an outsider might seem ridiculous. (Why is there always tumbleweed?) 

Now, wuxia is the latest evolution in a long-lived literary tradition (and by ‘long’ I mean like 2000+ years) -- but like any living tradition, each subsequent generation reinvents it for their time. Part of that reinvention comes from particularly influential writers, who put their own spin on things, and their interpretation becomes the next generation’s standard for the genre -- “of course wuxia must have X” or “a protagonist never does Y”. (Like how Tolkien almost single-handedly changed western concepts of elves, in fiction.)

And here’s where I explain what regency romance has to do with it. Another short-lived period, in real history, but along came Georgette Heyer, who took bits and pieces of actual research, blended them with her reactionary politics, exaggerating some things and ignoring other things completely. The result is a time-that-never-was, but she cast (and still casts) a shadow so vast that I’ve seen multiple romance writers complain that readers will see a footnoted-and-researched version as wrong, if it contradicts one of Heyer’s made-up conventions. 

Modern wuxia has its own Heyer-sized influencers -- like Jin Yong (the Condor trilogy, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils), Wen Rui'an (The Four), Gu Long (The Legend of Flying Daggers, The Proud Twins), to name a few of the biggest. If you have a chance or are inclined, the big names get remade on a pretty regular basis, and catching one will at least let you see some ur-tropes in action. 

But it also means that you can’t really extrapolate, in the sense of saying, “in wuxia, people do X, ergo, X is also a factor in Chinese culture.” It’s like... take any western made in the 50s, and the vernacular is simple. The bad guys wear black hats, the good guys wear white hats, the prostitutes wear bright-colored dresses with frills and the good women wear subdued colors buttoned up to their neck. It told an audience exactly what character filled what role, but that’d tell you zero about real people you might meet in Nebraska or Utah, let alone New York City. 

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 

Almost forgot: xianxia is basically wuxia but with ‘immortal heroes’ -- so there’s gods, divine influences, non-human beings as characters (main or NPC), etc. (Btw, by ‘immortal’ I mean exactly that, like this character is six hundred years old, that one’s a thousand years old, etc.) You can think of xianxia as wuxia, but amped way up on the mystical scale. 

Xianxia will sometimes take place on earth (jianghu) but sometimes in the celestial realm (heaven). Or a mix of both, like stories where a character falls (or is banished, or defects) from heaven and has to go through various trials and tribulations as a mortal human in order to regain a power, rise in rank, fall in love, or whatever their goal is. 

A number of wuxia stories are driven by some sort of mcguffin, but in xianxia, the mcguffin is more likely to be a powerful spiritual weapon. But I can also think of a number of wuxia in which the mcguffin would fit right in, in xianxia (some near-mystical thing with significant positive, or negative, power independent of the wielder, which often amplifies or boosts the wielder to an inhuman degree, etc). 

Thing is, the mcguffin being divine/infernal supernatural isn’t enough alone to make the story xianxia. I’m pretty sure you need non-human or super-human immortals and/or creatures to be considered in the xianxia genre. 

part two

[equalseleventhirds]

if you want to talk about hades town you can do so on this because i am very much interested in your thoughts about it!

fdsfjdskfds oh anon i am at Work and when i get out of work i will be Homework but......... listen. listen.

(ok a lot of this i’ve already rambled abt in my hadestown tag but. BUT). i got into hadestown pre-broadway, which means i listened to the original cast recording from 2017 a BUNCH. and while i adore both version, there were... changes. which i feel did orpheus a disservice, and the overarching plot a disservice, but in some ways treated eurydice better by filling her out more and making her more of a revolutionary. 

anyway, i defos don’t have time for a full song-by-song comparison, and also some of the songs available for the broadway version never made it onto the release of the 2017 version, not bcos they weren’t in the show, just bcos.... idk they weren’t released? weren’t recorded? i do not pretend to know the inner workings of the music industry.

BUT of note: the major changes to epic ii. in the original, orpheus was mocking of hades (’king of a kingdom of dirt’ yo), while in the broadway version, orpheus is just singing abt hades and persephone’s history. epic iii also removes that like, ‘a king who loves everythign like a hammer loves the nail’ and ‘he comes down heavy and hard on us’, so it’s MUCH less about the workers’ resentment of hades and just. about hades and persephone.

btw fuckin miss me with that narrative abt orpheus solving global warming by reminding the ruling class that they’re in love with each other? like, i’m sure that’s more appealing to ur standard can-afford-broadway audience, and as a LOVE story it’s cool, but. just not a good lesson actually. 

also ‘living it up on top’ completely cuts out his ‘why would a man of his own free will go to work all day in the mine and the mill’ which is, y’know, callous when considering the people (like, later, eurydice) driven to work for hades, but is TARGETED at hades, who for real does not NEED to work the way he does. miss that....

we also, throughout the broadway version, get a LOT of hermes speaking for orpheus. in the original, ‘come home with me’ is orpheus convincing eurydice, while the broadway version has hermes telling her that orpheus will make her feel alive. ‘living it up on top’ also changes from persephone speaking directly to orpheus and letting him take up the ‘bless this round’ bit, to having hermes volunteer him. blah blah ‘under my wing’ blah, but having a god (again, member of the ruling class, even if this one’s helpful) speak for him? when we have a version where he speaks for himself? come ON. i am not a fan of orpheus being made helpless! let him make his decisions! let his voice be one of persuasion even BEFORE he goes to the underworld!

(this also ties into my personal take that as a demigod, the son of a muse--and you know how those muses are--orpheus’ carelessness is what originally loses him eurydice. he does not care about eating through the winter, he’s never had to worry about that bcos hermes looks after him, while eurydice has had a harsh life and knows they DO need to worry. art is all well and good, but it is also important to care for the people in your life. it’s later, when orpheus loses eurydice and must venture into the harshness of the underworld, meets the workers/the wall and has to find SOLIDARITY with them in order to stand up to hades, that he finally recognizes the value of working with others to create a better life for all. in this essay i)

i also rly miss the original ‘promises’ bcos like, while orpheus & eurydice as always-in-love is sweet, i really enjoyed the fighty version where they are both resentful & angry abt broken promises, and both acknowledge that what they originally claimed to want from the other & give to one another was both unrealistic and not what they actually wanted, eventually coming to a conclusion that was more based on reality. like. communication resulting in a healthier relationship after dealing with unrealistic expectations.... we stan.

now that i’ve gone over how i think the original was better, i did still LIKE the broadway version, and there were some improvements! most notable, eurydice’s stronger role as like, an active revolutionary (or attempted one, anyway) rather than a more passive rescue.

i genuinely adored the change of ‘anyway the wind blows’ from an intro song by the fates to eurydice singing (with the fates backing her up/singing in her ear), bcos it sets up eurydice as an average sufferer of the world the gods made, and lets us hear it in her voice, her experience, and her opinions. she is the one to say weather ain’t the way it was before--and when we later get persephone telling us ‘some might say the weather ain’t the way it used to be’, she’s dismissing eurydice’s suffering (and the suffering of all humans), bcos she’s more concerned with her own issues with hades than with how she’s impacted the world.

(also the changes made had some Interesting Implications abt persephone’s complicity in that whole ‘keep your head low’ thing, that i think is p cool, actually? like afaik the 2017 version didn’t have ‘no spring/no fall’ going on, so the fact that the broadway one DOES and yet keeps her having spring flowers & autumn leaves only to the ppl in the underworld when she arrives.... inch resting. something something the ruling class provides ‘charity’ of resources people should already have as a reward for ‘good behavior’ something.)

eurydice at the beginning is isolated. she falls in love with orpheus and decides to stay with him, but even them being together does not mean he understands her, or values the same things she does. this is evident in both versions, but in the broadway version, when eurydice goes to the underworld, she does something interesting; she tries to introduce herself to the other workers. now, i never saw the 2017 version in full, only heard the album, but in the album she signs the papers and is rejoicing that she’s ‘free’ and has to be told that she isn’t. she doesn’t really speak to the other workers, beyond this exchange about ‘freedom’. in the broadway version, she’s dejected--she did what she had to do. she knows that’s what the other workers did. and she goes to talk to them about it, bcos in spite of where they are, she wants to create a connection with her fellow workers (building solidarity! my girl!!) (also interesting: at the start of the show. she’s alone. she’s always been alone. she sings about how people always turn on you and she’s better off alone before she meets orpheus, but even after she has to leave him, she tries to make a connection with other people. oh...... character development, we love it.) she doesn’t SUCCEED, but she TRIES. which may be important in why they choose to follow HER later.

now we come to chant (reprise), wait for me (reprise), and doubt comes in, the BEST revolutionary eurydice songs in the ENTIRE show. in the 2017 version these were mostly orpheus-focused (and altho i miss the ‘he said he’s shelter us/he said he’d harbor me’ parallels from the 2017 version of chant ii, the company singing with eurydice & orpheus about ‘if i raise my voice, if i raise my head’ fucks SO HARD). eurydice sings with the workers as they’re revolting, and when they walk out of hadestown, the workers follow her. (they don’t follow orpheus, even tho that’s who eurydice is following; ‘if she can do it so can we’. she’s one of them. she’s the one they’re following. can you BELIEVE). eurydice also gets to echo (louder, stronger, and using our instead of my) orpheus’s fantastic fucking ‘i hear the walls repeating the falling of my feet and it sounds like drumming’ bit, with the workers giving her backup. god. so fucking good.

and then, again, i never saw the 2017 version, but ‘doubt comes in’ in that one is still melancholy even on eurydice’s parts; she’s hopeful, but she’s alone, entirely relying on orpheus to lead her. i did get to see the broadway version (and bro.... the production value on that.... the LIGHTS first of all, the LIGHTING, and this song in particular? all dark when orpheus sings so you can’t see eurydice, and then cut to eurydice in lights with the workers following? MY DUDE.) and eurydice’s bits in this song are triumphant. she is sure they will get out, she is dancing and turning back to the workers as she sings she is right behind him (they sing back: we are right behind you). she is following him and sure of him, and she is with the workers and they are with her.

which is part of why ‘sing it again’ does so little for me, actually? like, orpheus had his chance, and he fucked it up, and yes it’s a beautiful story and we want to think he’d do it right, but this is nothing like the end, and singing it again leaves no way to move forward. eurydice led the workers! she gave them her name, she made them care, she was their beacon of hope and what they could become (compare to their previous beacon of hope, persephone, who shows up once a year and sells them remnants of their former lives and does not try to lead them out bcos she’s too caught up in her own anger). eurydice did not make it out with orpheus, but i HAVE to imagine that she and the workers got that taste of freedom, that taste of memory, that taste of solidarity, and would not just forget it again. it becomes more than a love story, it becomes about eurydice’s position of solidarity with the other mortals (something orpheus almost gets, but fails due to insecurity and inexperience and being the outside-savior rather than one of them). and obvs that doesn’t work with the original orpheus and eurydice myth, but listen...... let them bother hades after the end. let them fucking unionize. pls it would be so GOOD i am just! i am just!!

[unforth]

So I have no idea what The Untamed is, but I keep seeing it show up on my dash. So I kinda want to check it out. Can you tell me if there's actual queer representation in it? Or is it more of a destiel kind of situation right now? (Love your fanfic btw)

ALRIGHT ANON I hope you’re ready to listen to me go the fuck off cause I’m so gonna because I fucking love this show!

Right off the bat, to answer the “is it more of a destiel kind of situation” the answer is absolutely fucking not, nor will it ever be, because The Untamed is 50 episodes long and complete, so where it is now is where it will always be. And where it is now...okay, so The Untamed is based on a novel called Modao Zushi (variously translated but the most commonly accepted is “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation”). MDZS exists in five different versions - the original novel (complete), an animation (in progress), a comic (in progress), a radio drama (...actually I have no idea if it’s done...) and The Untamed (the live action TV show). 

What it is...it’s originally a Chinese BL danmei (a novel, in this case published serially on a subscription website) by an author who writes under the pseudonym Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. It’s xianxia, which is a genre of Chinese fantasy inspired by Chinese mythology, religion, martial arts, and all kinds of other stuff...as a Westerner coming in with no experience, it’s been a LOT to learn the genre tropes and I’m still getting the hang of it, but you don’t need to know anything to appreciate the show - I didn’t, and nor did many of my friends, and we’ve all loved it. It has a wonderful ensemble cast (...okay, well, full disclosure, it has a wonderful male ensemble cast, the women in the novel leave something to be desired, they’re much better fleshed out in The Untamed but I could still wish for more in that regard...) with tons of side shipping potential...like, my favorite character isn’t even one of the two in the main ship, and I’d honestly be hard pressed to even name a top five because I love them all so much, and there’s a side ship I love almost as much as the main ship, and is also so close to canon as makes no difference, at least imo. The plot is pretty well fleshed out (or at least the points that are nonsensical are surprisingly easy to ignore...if you’ve seen Jupiter Ascending it had some of the same feel in that regard, like “parts of this writing are a trash fire but I’m enjoying the overall effect so much that I don’t even care any more”). The sets and the costumes are absolutely fucking gorgeous and if the CGI for some of the monsters made me want to weep it was so bad...well, I was a fan of Hercules the Legendary Journeys in the 90s so I’m prepared to forgive a lot to watch hot guys kick some ass, and speaking of the hot guys...

The main ship is composed of this guy, Wei Wuxian...

He is a quintessential disaster bi and I love him and would die for him. The novel is told primarily from his PoV and even The Untamed tends to focus more on his angle than others.

His other half is this guy, Lan Wangji...

(okay the glasses are NOT canon but how am I supposed to resist that line??). He is rule-following, law-abiding, and I totally didn’t get him at first and now I adore him.

This is full enemies to lovers in the best possible way.

From a Destiel PoV, I basically write Wei Wuxian the same way I write Dean, and I basically write Lan Wangji the same way I write Castiel, and people tell me pretty often that they love my characterizations so...the personality parallels, they are strong.

Their ship is most commonly called WangXian. Are they canon? In the novel, yes. They are canon. They are literally married. They have actual explicit sex that you can read in all its glorious detail (actually I shouldn’t talk it up that much I didn’t personally enjoy the canon sex all that much but that’s a totally different topic). They are the most canon of canon, no holds barred, mano-a-mano, god I wish they’d use lube, I can tell you who canonically tops and bottoms and what their main kinks are, and they are so in love and there are ridiculous declarations at the worst possible moments and there’s a wedding...it’s canon. 

Now, China has some pretty crazy censorship laws that include making it an arrestable, punishable offense to make the queer explicit in the TV show. Thus, there is no explicit moment where, in The Untamed, they say, “yes we are a couple and we are in love.” However, the following things are canon:

-they are soulmates (link to gif set by @ohsesuns - the source for these two gifs, I hope you can forgive me just embedding them but someone asked me for a guide and I think just linking might not get the point across/require too much expectation of people clicking through...)

-they have their own theme song...which is called the portmanteau of their ship name (link to gif set by @wangxiians, with two used for demonstration purposes...again, my apologies for embedding them like this, I’ll pull them if you’d prefer) And mind you, in this scene, Lan Wangji just sang their song out loud while a montage played of important moments in their relationship with each other it is the gayest most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

-THIS IS LITERALLY HOW THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER

-neither has a female love interest or any other romantic subplot or any kind of “fake out” and this is the way Lan Wangji looks every time Wei Wuxian is like, “you’re never gonna get a girlfriend with that attitude” (labeled as by someone named mabomanji on a website called tenor that I’ve never used before...)

-DID I MENTION THIS IS HOW THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER

-oh and they have a son...sort of...close enough...okay it’s way more complicated than that but whatevs I don’t want to spoil all the fun...

-OH MY GOD I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION THE HANDFASTING? Lan Wangji constantly lets Wei Wuxian touch the “sacred headband that only family members and loved ones can touch” and at one point to protect Wei Wuxian he wraps it around each of their wrists (source for this screen cap is a set on twitter by krayziewes)

I’m sure at least three people will look at this and be like HOW DID YOU LEAVE OUT THIS OTHER THING and all three things they name will be DIFFERENT because the show is just that fucking gay.

So you ask me, is it like Destiel?

With Supernatural, with Destiel, the show writers, producers, everyone, strings us along, giving us just enough to think we’ve got a chance. The only risk they face in making it canon would be a drop in rating and alienation of some of the fanbase and yet they refuse to do it. I do not believe and have never believed that Destiel will be canon, and my reaction is constant disappointment, because seriously, what would it cost them to show it? Absolutely fucking nothing, especially now that it’s ending now, but they won’t. (okay, that’s just my opinion, I guess the last few episodes will show...but I at least have zero hope.)

With The Untamed...with Wangxian...literally everyone involved in The Untamed risked being disappeared by the Chinese government and actual imprisonment to make the show as gay as humanly possible without quiiiiiiiiiiite crossing the line into explicit queerness. Behind the scenes footage makes it clear that the entire cast and production crew have read the novel. The crew jokingly refers to Wei Wuxian as Lan Wangji’s wife (yeah, sorry, there’s some splashes of misogyny especially in the novel) and the looks on any of the actors’ faces when they’re interviewed and asked about (female) love interests are honestly fucking priceless...but no one can say it out loud, no one can make it explicit in the purest sense, because they risk their livelihoods, their families, their futures, their lives, if they say in reply to that interviewer, “um are you a fucking moron didn’t you realize there WAS a romance in the show and it was between two men?” But everyone with a half a brain knows. It’s not subtle. It’s not a secret. My straight cis male friend who is watching keeps screaming at me about how gay it is and he’s only on like episode 10.

Would I kill for a canon kiss or an actual traditional love declaration?

Yes, of course, I’d love that. 

But do I think WangXian isn’t canon in The Untamed just because it isn’t shown in those most simplistic terms?

Oh my god it is so canon WangXian are husbands and they are in love and they live for each other and it’s amazing and I adore theeeeeeeeeeeem. 

Wangxian. Are. Canon.

[theawkwardqueerturtle]

Welp, I went and made a playlist out of my OTPs plus a ship that I don’t even fully ship (it’s complicated). Keep reading for songs and ships I matched them up to, plus explanations.

Drarry-Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter- “FOOLS” and “My! My! My!” by Troye Sivan, in this specific order. This is sort of the timeline of their relationship; Draco feels bad about crushing on Harry through their years at Hogwarts because of his parents and Harry feels bad because of the way Draco treats his friends (probably just trying to distance himself), but then after the war ends he and Harry start to make amends and start going out and become happy together.

Scorbus-Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Potter- “for him” by Troye Sivan. It’s just an upbeat song about puppy love, which is exactly the sort of feel I get for this ship.

Romione-Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger- “Still Into You” by Paramore. Because they were friends and crushing on each other for years before finally getting together and when they do they continue to love each other.

Deamus-Dean Thomas/Seamus Finnigan- “YOUTH” by Troye Sivan. Because they’re a couple of cheerful, youthful guys, and this song has the sort of vibe that they give off.

Snily-Severus Snape/Lily Evans- “Stupid Boy” by Keith Urban. This is the one I don’t fully ship; I do agree that Snape was probably in love with Lily, I don’t think she felt the same even before he called her a mudblood. The song is about a guy in a similar situation to Snape’s in this context; realizing he mistreated someone he loved dearly and knowing he has to live with that regret.

Jily-James Potter/Lily Evans- “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” by Elvis Presley. I feel like this relationship was very fast-paced. They had a baby at around 20, for god’s sake! This song is about realizing you’re moving too fast but throwing caution to the wind and moving along anyway.

Wolfstar-Sirius Black/Remus Lupin- “WILD” by Troye Sivan. Since a lot of this ship takes place while they were still going to Hogwarts, it just works. Also feel like this song is primarily from Remus’s perspective, since Sirius tends to be more reckless while Remus is more cautious.

Linny-Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley- “Hey Soul Sister” by Train. A carefree, happy sort of song about a carefree, happy sort of couple. I feel like Ginny would serenade Luna with this one.

Spirk-James T. Kirk/Spock- “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri. Not gonna lie, this one’s partially because of an AMV I saw of them with this song that I thought was really beautiful. I also just feel like it makes sense that one of the oldest ships in existence would be paired with “A Thousand Years”.

Karushuu-Karma Akabane/Gakushuu Asano- “Animal” by Neon Trees and “Judas” by Lady Gaga. Okay, so I actually went through three different songs titled “Animal” (one by Troye Sivan and the other by Maroon 5) trying to figure out which one worked best for these two; I ultimately picked the Neon Trees because it had the most appropriate feel for these two. I also picked Judas because I feel like Gakushuu was probably really worried about Karma’s reputation, at least at the beginning of their relationship.

Suzaku Kururugi/Euphemia Li Britannia (if they have a proper ship name, I don’t know it)- “Kryptonite” by Three Doors Down and “Your Guardian Angel” by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. I genuinely couldn’t decide which was most appropriate, so I picked both. They’re both very appropriate for a couple constantly trying to protect each other, even when they can’t.

Madohomu-Madoka Kaname/Homura Akemi- “When You Love a Woman” by Journey. A powerful song about the woman in your life. What more can I say?

Zukka-Zuko/Sokka- “They Don’t Know About Us” by One Direction. This was a tough one. So much angst, and yet they have such an upbeat vibe about them. I finally remembered this song existed, and it’s just so hopeful and optimistic even in a not-so-ideal situation. It’s exactly what I was looking for. I’m not personally the biggest fan of One Direction, btw, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Kataang-Katara/Aang- “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. Just a cheerful, bouncy tune about puppy love for a cute, young relationship.

Edited to add:

Sayakyo-Sayaka Miki/Kyoko Sakura- “You Raise Me Up” by Celtic Woman. I was just watching the show and seeing these two interact just reminded me so much of this song.

Another edit for another addition:

Shizaya-Shizuo Heiwajima/Izaya Orihara- “Nicotine” by Panic! At The Disco. You guys have no fucking idea how frustrated I got trying to think of a song for these two assholes. Ended up picking this one because it very much matches the tone of their relationship; honestly I’m surprised there aren’t any AMVs or edits of the two of them to it. That’s probably part of the reason I didn’t think of it sooner.

Yet another edit:

Isaactor-Isaac/Hector- “Will You Be There” by Michael Jackson. I just love the idea of these two slowly but surely learning to trust each other and be happy

[vagrantblvrd]

I would love anything Turnfreewood!

Lol, I was sorting my music collection when I had the perfect idea for your prompt, friend!

Vaguely noir-ish AU inspired by some songs from the game Contrast?

Private detective Ryan who used to be a cop before he left the police force.

Something, something, something shady business going on with corrupt cops and the like and idealistic idiot that he was he tried to expose it? But the baddies found out what he was doing and went after his partner, got them killed.

And Ryan, he’s not overly idealistic or anything, but he’s young, right. Got a real good look at how high the corrutption he was trying to expose went. How far-reaching, and in case he hadn’t realized that for himself he gets some visitors not long afterward.

Nice. Friendly. Letting him know if he kept pushing things his family might meet with some trouble of their own. (Ryan can’t be everywhere, you know? Can’t be on guard 24/7 to look out for the people closest to him - RIP his partner, btw - and so on.

The usual.

So Ryan.

He hates it, but they have a point, don’t they.

He’s just this little idiot in over his head and tells his family and friends some story about being forced to face his mortality while he was bleeding out in that alley with his partner. Waiting for backup that got there too late to do his partner any good, almost too late to save him and he lost the taste for being a cop.

Quits the force and leaves town (runs away) and kicks around for a little bit, gets all bitter and cynical and such and has these ~adventures that land him in, idk. Achievement City or Los Santos or somewhere.

(This feeling in the back of his head that things aren’t over, and he’ll have to face up to it sooner or later but that’s a future problem and why not try to forget about it for now?)

The kind of adventures where someone jokes he should become a private investigator because he’s more or less been solving crimes/cases in those adventures of his?

Supposed to be a joke, but it’s not like Ryan’s got anything else going on in his life at the moment, so private investigator it is!

Leases a little office somewhere and somehow manages to pull in enough business to pay the bills and tuck some away towards his savings. (Has to dip into said savings every so often for repairs/medical bills/whatever caused by cases and all that.)

And then one day someone walks into his office with a case. Something to do with a dead relative and a missing will. Or maybe it’s someone being blakmailed and someone mentioned Ryan as being both reliable and discreet and all that good stuff. (That, Ryan suspects, or no one would miss him/be all that bothered/surprised he got in over his head on one of his cases.)

Whichever it is, he’s in enough trouble financial-wise the money he’s being offered is too good to pass up, or worse? The client mentions the name of someone Ryan owes big-time who sent the client his direction with the expectation Ryan would know better than to say no.

SO.

Ryan takes the case and does all this Private Investigating.

Goes to his usual contacts and snitches around the city. Trustworthy and reliable ones and ones he can trust to look out for their own best interests and bribe/threaten them for what information he can get out of them. (And then figure out what’s true and bold-faced lies and working from there.)

Gets followed by Suspicious Sorts. Offered money to drop the case and send his client looking elsewhere for help and all that.

Gets into a back alley scuffle where he doesn’t quite come out on top but doesn’t leave with his tail between his legs either.

Goes to ground for a bit while he puzzles over what he knows, maybe goes to see his buddy in the police department here, and boy is Geoff ever not thrilled to see him.

“Seems like the only time I see you around is when you need something, Haywood,”

And Ryan being all scruffy and charming at him until Geoff sighs and tells him to go find Jack who will be able to give him what they’re allowed to without crossing any lines with ethics and the whatnot.

Jack is just as not-thrilled to see Ryan - goes all “What’s with the black eye?” the same way Geoff did and sighs as he hands over the files Ryan asks for. Tells him he’s an idiot and that Geoff and Jack didn’t see him, haven’t seen him in weeks. (And for fuck’s sake, don’t get killed idiot. the paperwork’s a bitch.)

Ryan all lol as he takes the files home with him and goes over them there. Just as confused about what the hell he’s gotten himself into this time, but!

There’s this one clue that has him sighing because he knows someone who knows someone who might - might - help.

Just has to do a little begging first.

SO.

He goes down to this little bar Meg runs with live singers and performers and all that? Trevor at the piano who flirts outrageously with Alfredo who’s one of the bouncers along with Jeremy.

Lindsay’s there doing whatever it is Lindsay feels like most days as far as Ryan can figure out? Michael’s a bartender/bouncer/whatever along with Fiona, and every once in a while one or both of them end up on stage because reasons?

All that.

Meg performs a few times a week, sings and dances or whatever else and sometimes Ryan heads there when he’s not working on a case because it’s one of the few places in town he’s actually welcome with open arms and all that.

Mariel handles most of the business side of things and Tyler is in charge of security and the like? (Something???)

Anyway.

Odds are good there are more things going on there than what the public sees - Meg and the others know way too much about what goes on in the city to explain otherwise - but Ryan’s never asked, (Learned better than that a long time ago.)

The first time he goes there during his current case Meg’s rehearsing on stage.

Middle of the afternoon and the place is closed to customers, but Ryan’s got a standing invitation to come by anytime he feels like it and everything. Good friends with Meg and the main players there and on good terms with everyone else.

Ryan walks in just as Meg starts singing this song, smiles when she looks over and catches his eye because they’ve got this Complicated relationship going on, you know?

On and off again and no hurt feelings (well, anymore, but all the grief she gives him is definitely deserved, okay.)

When she finishes the song she shoos everyone else working to deal with bar business and whatnot and takes Ryan over to a corner booth to talk business because he’s got the look he gets when he’s on a case.

When he fills her in on what he’s been up to the last few days she just. Gives him this look because fucking Christ, Ryan’s an idiot?

Getting all tangled up in Serious Business and such and oh, honey. That black eye looks awful.

Some flirting and concern and Meg despairing of Ryan and his life choices before she gives in and tells him what she can, promises to ask around for him, and oh, hey.

Maybe go see Gavin and what he can dig up for Ryan?

Which.

Yikes, because Gavin is part of this Complicated relationship Ryan has with Meg?

Part of this on again off again relationship the three of them ever quite manage to make work - timing’s always off and all that - but the times it does work are pretty great?

Just.

He’s good with Meg at the moment, but Gavin’s still kind ticked at him?

Something, something, something Ryan on a case and getting Gavin involved and the kind of shenanigans that almost got Gavin killed? Unpleasant reminder Ryan’s not infallible, that he got his old partner killed and oh, God, because he clearly didn’t learn his lesson if he’s putting Gavin - ad Meg - in the line of fire?

So he does what he thinks he has to to drive Gavin away and leaves things between them on a bad note. Meg saw what he was doing and stopped Ryan before he could try it with her too, but she warned him he was making a mistake and that he better apologize to Gavin make it up to Gavin or Ryan would regret it?

So of course he doesn’t, and Meg is just. Not angry, just disappointed and while Gavin figured out why Ryan did what he did, he’s not forgiven him for it. (Yet.)

ANYWAY.

Complicated because Ryan’s an idiot and Meg and Gavin are definitely aware of that fact, yes, Waiting for Ryan to get his shit together and figure out what he wants.

(In the meantime they’re..not-quite in a relationship? Like. Showing up as one another’s plus one at functions and seeing movies or going out to dinner together and such but aren’t Officially Dating, because waiting on their idiot and all.)

Ryan goes off to see Gavin who’s like. Freelance photographer or hacker or something, and they argue and bicker. Are about to move on to bantering, like maybe they’re ready to start dealing with their idiot issues when the guys who have been trying to intimidate Ryan into dropping his case make a move.

The whole fight in a dark alley/street and running from the baddies to end up back at Meg’s bar after closing time.

She’s just.

SIGH at these idiots and sits them down at that back corner booth to path themselves up/talk and goes to give them privacy as she deals with…other stuff? IDK.

Ryan and Gavin are patching one another up and don’t realize Meg’s finished up in her office and is playing a song over at the piano as tjhey talk and Ryan apologizes to Gavin.

But when they do, they look over and Meg’s got this little grin on her face because ridiculous and then like.

Smooches, probably?

More shenanigans that involve at least one (1) gunfight and a kidnapping or two (Gavin, of course and he’s super not thrilled at always being the damsel in distress, but Meg thinks it’s hilarious.)

A car chase and/or cat and mouse scene in an abandoned warehouse and Ryan solving his case to the relief/delight of his client and Ryan being like Jesus Christ, why does he keep doing this to himself? because he’s all bruised and battered and his car is probably a complete loss as far as the insurance company is concerned.

In the end he breaks even financially, but he’s made up with Gavin and has a date that Friday night with him and Meg and hey, things could have gone worse???

(That whole bit about his Tragic Backstory RE his former career as a cop definitely comes back to bite him in the ass in a future adventure, too. Wacky, zany adventures with many life-threatening moments and close calls with Meg and Gavin and good guys putting the bad guys in their places and more smooches before the credits roll. Or…something, yes.)