#i mean…… i suppose i could ship with multiple different versions of them?

[delightfuldevin]

I am……… debating if I should add more Sonic characters to my f/o list hbcjbdsj

[orionsangel86]

Hob Gadling - A Queer Romantic?

I have been listening to The World's End chapters of The Sandman on Audible lately and just finished Hob's Leviathan. I didn't pay this story much attention when I first read the comic, as I tended to read through the stories quickly and put more focus into the stories where Dream had a larger role. But one of the reasons I like listening to the Audible book is because it allows me to absorb each story more thoroughly and take my time thinking about each one and the (usually multiple) meanings behind them.

Hob Gadling is a character that fandom has fallen in love with. I think this is clear to anyone that takes even a partial glance at Sandman fandom. This isn't a criticism - Ferdie's performance as Hob in the Netflix show has done wonders for Hob's character. He has made his version of Hob very easy to fall in love with!

But the truth is that in The Sandman comics, Hob is a minor character who we only get to know very little about. The story Hob's Leviathan appears in The Worlds End Sandman book. We only meet him twice before this, once in The Doll's House, where we are introduced to him in Men of Good Fortune, and again in Season of Mists when Dream comes to let him know that he may miss their next meeting. In both these issues, Hob is introduced via the narrator, and therefore I like to think that we are given a fairly honest representation of the kind of person he is. We watch him grow and learn throughout the centuries in MoGF, but one of the major takeaways from this I believe is that he tends to always be on the wrong side of history. He makes bad choices and can be a bit narrow minded. He is rude and selfish and also rather self-absorbed. I actually think that the performance of the voice actor who plays Hob in the Audible book emphasises these character flaws making him even more unlikeable in many ways, though I am aware that this could just be my own experience and opinion.

But Hob's Leviathan takes a different view of Hob. Literally. The narrator of this story is a young boy of 16 called Jim. Jim met Hob on a ship travelling from Bombay to Liverpool in 1914. Jim was working on the ship as a cabin boy and Hob had bought his passage back to England - though it is revealled at the end of the story that Hob actually owned the ship they were travelling on. It is clear that at this point in time, Hob is extremely wealthy.

Jim attends to Hob throughout the journey, and grows very fond of him. In Jim's tale, Hob is a good man, who is kind and thoughtful and cares about others. He saves the life of a stowaway (who turns out to be another immortal). He is shown to be patient, and funny, and very intelligent. Jim waxes poetic about how smart Hob is, and how much he impressed him. It is particularly clear in the Audible book that Jim is taken with Hob, to the point that it could arguably be a crush.

It is fascinating how much more likeable Hob is when narrated from the viewpoint of someone with a crush on him, whether this story is exaggerated through rose tinted glasses is of course something to consider. All the tales in World's End are just that, tales. There is a constant undercurrent of exaggeration and make believe to them where even the other patrons of the inn question elements to each of the stories. We are not supposed to take these stories as absolute fact, rather they are supposed to reveal to us more about the narrators as well as their own experiences existing in this magical and strange world.

When it is revealled that Jim is actually a girl called Peggy in disguise so they can get work on the ships, the quite obvious crush makes more sense to a heteronormative audience, but what I particularly like about this story is its queer potential. See in the comic, it isn't really clarified if Jim goes by Jim because they feel more themselves as a boy, rather than a girl, or if they are disguising themself as a boy just to get work as a means to an end. I would argue that the latter is the more obvious interpretation. Jim tells the other World's End patrons that they are getting too old to keep up the disguise and will eventually have to stop working in shipping, and that when that happens, they will take on a new name, a new identity and do something else, but that for now, the patrons can keep calling them Jim.

*for a lack of clarity around the point in the comic, I am going to use gender neutral pronouns for Jim going forward*

Now from Hob's POV, he figured out that Jim was a girl, and they talk about it briefly along with the sea serpent they saw. I think that at this point, Hob is impressively progressive compared to the previous times we have met him. Now whether or not this is biased storytelling from someone who has a crush on him remains to be seen, but if we take Jim's word as truth, not only is 1914 Hob a fair and honest man who is willing to pay the way of a stowaway and fully respect the secrets of a young girl disguised as a boy so they can work on ships, but he's also totally comfortable flirting with them.

I like that he calls Jim the "handsome cabin boy". I like that this version of Hob, whether real or an exaggeration skewed by Jim's feelings for him, respects Jim's identity. Jim may be a girl in disguise, but Hob doesnt call her pretty, he calls him handsome.

It's all just a bit subtly queer and I like that for Hob (But then I would do, I'm a Dreamling shipper HA)

When Jim finishes their story, they state that they didn't see Hob again after that, but the comics later do give us a possible outcome to Jim's story...

We next see Hob in The Kindly Ones where he is mourning the death of his girlfriend Audrey. He briefly reveals that Audrey was the first person he had loved since Peggy, who was his lover until her death during the Blitz. Whilst it isn't made clear that Hob's lover Peggy is the same Jim that we meet in World's End, it is a bit too much of a coincidence. The timing adds up. If Jim was 16 in 1914, they'd be in their early 40s during the Blitz. Hob remains forever in his early 30s so I'd say its a safe bet that Jim eventually found Hob again and they were together. Hob loved them enough that he wasn't with anyone again until Audrey in the 80s. That's 50 years worth of mourning. A long time not to be with anyone, even for an immortal.

It's funny because we know so little about Hob, but one thing that I have seen commented on here a lot is that comic Hob is deemed to be as Straight as an arrow. Now I admit that the voice actor in the Audible book plays him very straight, but that is still only one interpretation.

All this is to say that I am fascinated with how the Netflix show will adapt this, since Hob in the show already comes across much kinder and more selfless than his comic counterpart. He already has an entire fandom viewing him as queer, and the comics certainly don't outright shut down such interpretations. There are moments in the comics that you have to wonder on. He does call Jim handsome rather than pretty, and when he talks to Audrey's grave he mentions his wives and loves as separate groups. He talks about finding it easy to get sex if you want it, and he talks about it in generally gender neutral terms. In Sunday Mourning Gwen reveals that she thought he was gay when she first met him, though her reasonings were that he knew so many dead people (a dark reminder that these comics were published at the height of the Aids epidemic). He reacts very badly to the news of Morpheus' death. He states on several occassions just how much he liked Morpheus, and he is one of the few people to wake up from the Wake with tears running down his cheeks. I would arguably state that its between Hob and Matthew as to who had the worst reaction to Morpheus' death, showing just how much both Hob and Matthew cared about him, and placing Hob on par with Matthew in the comics is a big deal. He seriously considers accepting Death's gift when she offers it, simply because Morpheus is dead. He doesn't, because at the end of the day, its just not in his nature to do so, and given he then dreams of Morpheus, I like to think that it was a test, that he passed.

When it comes to how the show will adapt all this, I genuinely think it will take a new approach with Jim/Peggy. I think they will be either a trans man, or at least non binary. But I think having Jim be a trans man is the better option. In the comics, Jim's tale is only very subtly queer, Jim clearly likes being Jim, but it seems like its a means to an end, a convenience in order to get work on the ships, rather than being something that is core to Jim's feelings on their gender. Besides, if we assume that Jim is indeed the Peggy Hob talks about in The Kindly Ones, then we know that Jim goes back to being Peggy when they get older and apparently continues living as a woman whilst they are with Hob, otherwise I doubt Hob would have referred to one of his greatest loves by a name they themselves rejected and only used she/her pronouns when talking about them. Nevertheless there is no reason for the show to take this approach, and if they DO decide that Jim should be a trans man, then their relationship with Hob is canonically a queer one. Trans men are men and if one of Hob's greatest loves is a trans man, then Hob is a queer man himself. I genuinely believe the show will take this route and I can't wait to see it.

Going back to my point about narrators bias, if MoGF, SoM, tKO, and TW are all narrated by a neutral third party, then this must be the true Hob. A not overly likeable rather selfish man. He has his good points, and he has certainly grown and changed over the centuries, and carries a lot of guilt for his past mistakes, but he is still quite self absorbed. Jim paints a picture of a rose tinted Hob that is far more the dreamy romantic older gentleman that took a young person under his wing. Which is fair enough.

The show is of course its own adaptation, with changes from the comics as it sees fit, but I do feel it's my duty to remind you that the show also has a narrator guiding the audience through its many stories. Dream of the Endless, Lord Morpheus, King of Nightmares and Prince of Stories himself. Take from that whatever you will.

;-)

[buffyfan145]

Major Spoiler Warning!!!

Now with the spoilers confirming we're getting multiple versions of Sauron in season 2 of "Rings of Power" and the actor's name, I think we Haladriel shippers need to figure out what to call the new pairing as I'm sure some of us will ship Galadriel with Gavi's version of Sauron too and there will be others within the shippers that don't because it's not Halbrand (even though it is LOL). Reminds me a lot of "Doctor Who" and other fandoms where this happens. To me Haladriel is only with Charlie's Halbrand version of Sauron, Saurondriel is with every form of Sauron (but I also don't like using this as I know Sauron himself hated that name which is why lately I just refer to him as Halbrand or Mairon LOL), and then Martanis is Mairon and Galadriel/Artanis but it's highly unlikely the show can use that name even though Gavi's version is supposed to be this version. I've also written Mairon in all my fics looking like Charlie/Halbrand too so that's going to be confusing in the future. It's also likely Gavi's Sauron is also the Annatar version (Annadriel?), as they're doing a version of that storyline, but again we don't know if they can use that name and it could be a brand new name. So things are going to get complicated (and even more if there's more actors and animal forms LOL) and I guess we'll likely use different ship tags for each form and then use Saurondriel for a tag for all of them. But I've also already seen posts shipping Galadriel with both versions at the same time too. LOL 😏

ETA: Also want to point out that when I mean about Saurondriel I'm also talking about other formats the LOTR has been adapted to as well, as this to me also covers the book versions as well as Cate Blanchett and Benedict Cumberbatch's versions from the films too (as I've actually seen fanart and fics now with their versions).

ETA 2: Adding on again that I also meant this post for myself incase I and others need to block the ship tag for this other version. I don't know how I'll feel about this till it airs and I'm open to shipping Galadriel with all of Sauron's forms but in case I don't I want to block the ship and not the actor's name as that's not fair to him.

[jade-kyo]

RvB 20th rewatch: s10

An end of an era… god I love this season… I love this story

DELTA!!!!!!!!

CAROLINA BABYGIRL!!!!

“I think I just got dumped by Caboose… this is un-fucking-believable”

Washington commits identity theft

Wash and Carolina interaction my beloved

Also I feel like the animation really improved between seasons

“Let’s just say you know a lot of women with quick tempers… you got a fetish or something?” // “I guess yeah you could say… apparently…” Church a sub confirmed

Trocadero my beloved

Carolina my babygirl you will discover your lost silly soon don’t worry

I’m a fucking moron how have I never noticed that the ship in the junkyard was the staff of Charon

I mean I knew it was a part of Charon but I just never made the connection that it was THE staff of Charon

I love that Sarge is the one who vouches for Wash. Sarge character development my beloved.

OH THE PENIS JOKE THAT TOOK ME THREE REWATCHES TO REALIZE IT WAS A PENIS JOKE

WAIT THE DIALOGUES DIFFERENT

I SWEAR Wash says “yeah but yours is green” but in this version he says “yeah but yours is really shiny, so it looks more substantial”

I kept thinking some of the dialogue was different on the dvd version from what I was used to but I kept second guessing myself

THETA!!!!!!

Man sometimes the Director says things and I’m just like… that was a kind of Church thing to say my guy. Feral.

Carolina cares so much akahskshfusgjsgdkshdkd

“Don’t tell me how to lead my squad” bro the first time I watched this show I got SO MAD at Carolina, I straight up did not like her… man I was a dumb bitch

Theta falling off his skateboard is so cute omg

Carolina embrace your inner silly

“Usually I would agree with Simmons but in this case that would also cause me to agree with Grif therefore I will simply grunt ambiguously… *ambiguous grunt*” quoted line

Love that Tucker is the one who usually points out the difference between Alpha and Epsilon… taking notes

Also love how chill Tucker is about Church being multiple people

Wash is as silly as his straw

Why does he have so many FRUITS

I love Carolina and York fucking with Wash

Hey remember when I did that guess the fake fact poll and everyone thought there was no way Elijah Wood was in the show? Good times

Caboose messing with Church my beloved

“Friendenepanion” line quoted

God they establish so many parallels between Tex and Carolina

Rip CT

“How the hell am I supposed to trust a ragtag team of idiots when I couldn’t even trust the people closest to me” THATS WHY YOU CAN TRUST THEM!!!! BECAUSE THEYRE IDIOTS!!!!!!!! DONT WORRY BABYGIRL YOU WILL UNDERSTAND SOON!!!

G o d Yorkalina you will always be famous to me

Screaming crying throwing up

“I mean we are friends” // “… friends…” SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP

AAAAHHHHH EPSILON AND CAROLINA MY BELOVED

THEYRE SO SILLY!!! THEY DESERVE TO BE SILLY!!!!!!

Wyomings mustache is the sexiest character

AGONY

The show: angst agony pain // me: giggling kicking my feet because I just love the show so damn much I can’t help but happy stim when I’m watching it even when it’s pain

It was so real of them to just have Carolina have this one sided beef with a copy of her dead mom. Absolutely insane. I love it.

“No because I’m pissed off!” That one line really made me love Tucker even more. I remember being floored by it and suddenly realizing that oh shit this is fr getting tense like- he’s ACTUALLY mad. Just such a good subtle character moment

So like was Sheila just… left in that crashed pelican… forever

York is such a cringefail king

“Thanks I won’t need it” THE PARALLELS

ALLISON

GOD CAROLINAS SCREAMS

Feral

DONUT!!!!!!!!!

DOC!!!!!!!!!!

Church being defensive of Carolina AGSKGDKSHSKD

Tex is very small compared to North

OMG ALPHA GETTING TORTURED AHSKHAKSHSKHSKSHSJSHSKHSKS POSSIBLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE SCENES!!!!!

Sarge continues to have the best character development

Wash’s implantation, Tex learning the truth, Allison reveal IM AKJSKAHSKHDKSJ F E R A L

The fact that the director was gonna send Carolina to find Tex is INSANE

“You and Wash are taking your relationship to the next level, I knew it the writing was all over the wall” Caboose was the first carwash shipper

SARGE YOU ARE SO INCREDIBLE

Fun fact: everyone walking out on Church and Carolina was the first scene that actually made me cry

TEX YOU ARE SO SEXY

AUAUUAGSJHSKSHSJ YORKALIN

Tex just wanted to save them… she just wanted to save Alpha and Carolina auuuuhjajahjshajsjkshdjsjjsh

GOODBYE

G O D THEYVE COME SO FAR I CANT AKDHAKHSKAHSKBS WORDS

NINE POINTS YA DIRTY WHORES!!!!!

“Cheesy forgiveness speech later” and I like to headcanon that they held Church to that

ROSES ARE RED!!!!

G o d Chex you were always doomed…. Agony

GOODBYE

I literally have no words for what the Carolina and Director and Church scene makes me feel so I will simply summarize

AHKSHAKDHKAHSKHDKDHKWHSJSHKSHSKDBKDHXKDHKSJSOSHKSHDJJDJDBSKSHJD

-8)39/719)2&:93$8hwkahaiydhajisJWJDIHSKSBSIDGEJJEJ$2)/9$2&2)?:$&:!$-828&:@JEBDHEIGWJAIWHKQUE

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHHAHAHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

“Better is good enough” I’m gonna be sick

Putting the full Allison video at the end of the credits was FOUL

I really wish I was better at putting my thoughts into words cause G O D does this show make me feel things. I unlock 57 new emotions every time I watch it… truly I love this show. Especially the freelancer storyline. There’s something really special about all of this… just beautiful.

[baenyth]

Bizarre V3 AU Explanations and More!

I wanted to explain a bit more about the ongoings of my Bizarre V3 AU a bit more and explain some behind-the-scenes stuff, so let's-a-go!

All of the main 16 characters have or will have superpowers! This was foreshadowed in Miu's, Maki's, Ryoma's, Kokichi's, Gonta's, Kirumi's, and Tenko's character descriptions. I don't know what everyone's will be, but a basic description of the power system is that they have the rareness and luck factor of Stands from Jojo but resemble the Devil Fruit users in One Piece more in that the abilities are physical and can be seen by anyone. Unlike Devil Fruits, abilities can be stacked and there can be multiples of the same ability, so two people could be elastic, but one can drain stamina and convert it into light while another can generate electricity and make metal and plastic float around.

There's also a second power system that's essentially Haki from One Piece. Willpower shaped into three different forms.

The Seven Holy Essences are one of the main things Bizarre V3 will be about aside from the characters themselves. Their inspirations are the infinity stones, the chaos emeralds, antiquated western and Japanese astronomy/mythology, and the general concept that plot coupons could be anything, really.

The "smaller, lesser essences" are based on the fixed stars and are a pretty important part in the overall backstory.

I don't have too much of a plot laid out so far, but I want it to be five "seasons" of sort. All I have is season 1 (basically what the character introductions set up,) season 2 (Idabashi lore, maybe take inspiration from Sonic Adventure 2? Add in the Purple People Eater somewhere, first final boss fight, etc.) and season 3 (version 3 of Star-Hunter Squadron: Elite Rangers!)

Characters do wear alternate outfits, including day-by-day clothes (well, most of them have day-by-day clothes.) Shuichi has clothes on and off the job, Kaede has a variety of sweater vest-related combos, Miu wears various outfits that are not lab-safe, etc.

Ships I'll feature are as follows: Saimatsu, Harukaito, Tenmiko and maybe even polyamory with Angie, Irumatsu (in the form of awkward and bitter exes,) ambiguous and possibly one-sided Saioma, Omota, and Omeno, Kokichi x some original character that appears in season 2 and is supposed to have a ludicrous amount of chemistry with him, and Kirumiu (is that the name for Kirumi x Miu? Miurumi?), mostly because I like it and my idea for it is that two women trying to get information out of eachother end up bonding over a lot of similarities between the two.

Writing-wise, the hardest part for me is trying to fit the Himiko plots into everything else. Himiko's busy with her overprotective girlfriend, joining what may be a cult, and serial killers while the other three-fourths of the cast is trying to figure out what the hell is going on with displacements and blue glows. Maybe Gonta gets depressed and exhausted from finding no results and goes to see one of Himiko's shows or even invites Himiko and her lovely assistant over, but Tenko gets involved in said displacements and blue glows.

To explain what I mean by "disappearances, reappearances, and displacements," here's some of the mysteries described: "Help! I can't find my husband" solved as "Oh! There's my husband! At a restaurant we went to once and hated? And he doesn't know how he got there?", "I couldn't find my keys, but they were in the attic. I wasn't in the attic since five years ago.", and "What the heck is the TV remote doing in my neighbor's front lawn?"

Danganronpa will appear as an in-universe franchise, but non-V3 characters will appear. It'll make sense when it comes up. Also fake memories implanted into vessels may show up.

There will be a fight scene between Maki and Kirumi in season 1 where they both use their powers because 1. They are on opposing sides and 2. Cool strong women fighting.

My idea of "Ryoma heavily interacting with DICE" partly came due to my desire to do something unique with Ryoma. I'm honestly getting tired of him being paired up with Kirumi and Gonta. I think there'll be a scene between Ryoma and Kirumi in season 2 and possibly onward, but in general I want Kokichi and Kirumi to interact, maybe a few Kokichi-Gonta interactions too, but little-to-no Ryoma-Gonta interactions. Also it makes sense to pair up the criminals and the gentleman and maid together.

The Gokuhara manor's description of vegetation growing in and around it is supposed to be similar to how there was vegetation growing in the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles.

Rantaro has to be the green ranger because his western VA played The green ranger. I had a power rangers hyperfixation when I was 10.

[mdhwrites]

First I just want to say accurate and I appreciate the fact that the shortening actually makes this more rage inducing for you, much like how anyone who defends The Collector needs to re-evaluate their argument since he did not have to be a part of the show. Not when before S2B, he'd only been a part of a single dream sequence... That doesn't even feel in character to any other part of him.

I wanted to bounce on the last bit though about saying if you'd write something about Lumity and say... You don't really need to. As someone who has written a 300k+ Lumischa story, who has Lumity dynamics in his original works, etc. like that, I should be their greatest defender. I clearly have a deep love for them after all. But... No, especially post S1, and a lot of the points here just transfer over to Lumity. Amity's arc is about getting away from devoting her life to her parent's expectations and then devotes her entire existence to Luz. Their relationship is WAY better when they're not together and once they're together, the only development that happens to it is "What if Luz lied constantly?" We get one episode that's theoretically good but it's still about Amity's devotion to Luz so go back to the first issue. Amity as a character could be cut from the entire series and literally nothing would happen to the plot because the fandom meme of Amity meaning nothing important can happen literally never changed. Luz treats Amity like all of her friends. She even categorically treats Amity worse than Eda or King despite having spent more on screen time with Amity than literally either of the other two. That's not a joke even and it's part of why the Found Family angle of the show blows. Hell, Amity never seems to ever register that they're actually dating since during their first kiss, she literally has the same reaction she does to when she kissed Luz on the cheek because these writers can literally only write one romance. Eda and Raine are even pretty damn close to acting just like the fucking teenagers.

The one thing I want to add to this that I think you missed is one basic question: Why do they get together? Lumity's version of this is why they stay together since S2 Amity just becomes S1 Willow and Luz isn't dating Willow. By that same token though... The argument for Hunter getting with Willow is that Willow connected to him through shared pain and through an act of kindness. A moment of vulnerability he's not used to so now he's interested in her. It's a fine way to write a romance.

The problem is that that's also what happens with Luz in Hunting Palisman to some extent and explicitly the same sort of thing that happens with AMITY. THE LESBIAN. It's one of the worst parts of Hunter's writing. The dude's arc restarts THREE TIMES so that by the logic of the show, he can be shipped with three different girls. Willow isn't even the one that actually matters. Luz is. She's the one who knows his secrets. She's the one who he confides in. She's the one to save his life, multiple times, and be the one there for his character climax during Hollow Mind. Willow barely is even in Labyrinth Runners, especially not with Hunter, which is the closest she could have come to a second appearance that would have affected his arc.

I'm not even a Lunter shipper and I'm DEFINITELY not an Amiter shipper but like... If the moment of Willow opening up about being half a witch (which as someone with a mental disability, I would have smacked her for thinking her being a late bloomer was the same as straight up not having magic) is supposed to be when he starts falling in love, this moment of kindness, what about Amity holding her hand out during Eclipse Lake? Or the bonding moment about wild magic and Luz saying she thought better of him in Escaping Palisman?

Unless you want to say he just likes them thick, which is kind of shallow and shitty for a kid's show romance, there isn't a reason he chose Willow above the other two besides the fact that the other two were taken. That's not compelling, that's just shit.

Then again, none of the romances are compelling. They're all shit once they're together.

Huntl0w isn't good and that's why

A general compilation of all the problems that do not allow me to treat Huntl0w at least neutrally:

1. Distortion of characters. Do you remember Hunter from the beginning of season 2? And that's it, he is no longer with you. Now he is not a soldier who has been training all his life, he is a cute awkward blushing boy who can't do anything without his boss girlfriend. And do you remember Willow, a kind soul who uses her powers only against enemies? Forget, she'll drive a new acquaintance into the ground and won't let him go. They are trying to forcibly fit them into the girlboss x malewife dynamic, and for this they have to change their characters.

2. Lack of chemistry. The same problem as Lumity: all romantic interactions are embarrassments and red cheeks. But if the girls had a Grom dance and more time together, then Huntl0w has nothing.

3. Willow's attitude. She treats him the same way she treats all her other friends right up to the moment when he saved her with the help of the power of the Flapjack. I'm sure the writers didn't do it on purpose, but it turned out that way - Willow fell in love with Hunter only after he stopped being magically disabled. Or in gratitude for the rescue. One is no better than the other.

4. Hunter's awkwardness. The guy has known her for the fourth year, three of which they are clearly together, but still confused as the first time. He's obviously uncomfortable with her. But who is he comfortable with? With Luz and Gus! It is with Luz that he shares secrets, she understands him like no one else. With Gus, Hunter found the best common language, common interests, and in general they are on the same wavelength. Willow and Hunter don't have either. They were able to prescribe normal interaction with everyone except the love interest, and it's so fucked up.

5. The uselessness for the plot. They don't bring anything, even the very parallel with Caleb and Evelyn is ignored. It feels like they got together just to "pair every character" (except for Gus, of course, Gus is our black best friend, he doesn't deserve our attention).

6. Willow is Hunter's authority figure. There is nothing wrong with the fact that a girl can be a leader in a relationship. But when a guy just starts separating from his uncle, whom he considered an authority all his life, and immediately falls in love with a girl who commands him... This is a very bad parallel. Hunter just changed his boss. TOH is not so deep to develop this topic, and it don’t have enough time, so this is definitely a minus for them.

7. Lack of development. Yes, the series was cut. And now you say that this justifies everything. And I will say that it only makes it worse. Already knowing that the series would be shortened, Dana and co pushed a new love line, which "developed" behind the scenes, did nothing for the plot, but spoiled the characters' characters (as if Amity alone was not enough for us).

8. Hunter is the second Caleb. Yes, Hunter's arc has come to the same place where it began. This applies to a lesser extent to Huntlow, it is rather a sin of the plot itself, but in total with the rest of the problems it becomes no less infuriating.

In conclusion, I can say that this ship is definitely not problematic, it's just bad. No one is forbidden to love them, but they should understend why people may not like Huntl0w.

Maybe I'll write the same thing with Lumity, but I'm not sure.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Spelljammer is coming out soon, do you have any adventure ideas for Spelljammer? Or at least some open sea adventures you have that we could reflavor appropriately ?

Drafting the Adventure: Spelljamming

It’s been a while since I penned my initial thoughts on sailing the astral sea, and since that time, a few things have changed:

WoTC revived the setting with kickass art and not much else, disappointing just about the entire fandom and yet again requiring us the players to do the design work for them.

I binged all of @dimension20official‘s “A Starstruck Odyssey”, which not only got me really hype to run a space game but showed me a mechanical basis on which it could function ( seriously friends, go watch Starstruck)

 My Friend group decided to rewatch Treasure Planet, one of the formative pillars of my love of fantasy, and it got me thinking about how amazing the concept of space-pirate-fantasy is. I am and always will be a slut for cosmic wonder and there’s just something about the combination of these concepts that makes my brain come alive.

And so, I’ve decided to take a crack at overhauling Spelljammer, partially to bring it in line with my own version of the d&d cosmos and partially because as a game designer I can’t help but stare at all the negative space WotC gave us and imagine various possibilities. Mine’s not going to be a be all end all, and just like every homebrew fix I encourage you to look at different options until you find one that feels right to you and your table.

Now, below the cut I’m going to go into things about the spelljammer setting and specific mechanics I think will be useful, but before I do I’m going to give you folks a little preview of my opinions by going off on a meaningless tangent:

WHY THE HELL ARE SPELLJAMMING HELMS CHAIRS? No really, think about it. Apart from the fact that “Helm” specifically refers to the wheel and steering apparatus of a ship, the fantasy that spelljammer is supposed to be pulling from is nautical adventure; steely eyed captains masterfully piloting their vessels along the edge of a storm, the ship and their body pulling as one against the elements. The decision to make the helms chairs that channel magic rather than a wheel that requires sill turns the act of cruising through the cosmos into a mostly passive act, which I suppose mirrors the design decision to not actually require any input on the part of the jammer’s crew in order to sail it.  It’s not even that the designers were trying to emulate other popular sci-fi properties like starwars/trek, because despite the fact that people sit down while piloting in those settings, ships have an entire crew manning different stations and doing things. It’s almost like in trying to simplify a complicated game system, WotC decided that it would be better to remove ANY chance at interesting gameplay rather than put out a rules system that wouldn’t please everyone.

First off, I have to plug SW5E, The Dimension 20 crew used it as the architecture for their space game and after multiple hours of stress testing I couldn’t be more impressed. All the info is available for free online, and the more I dig into it, the more genius I find it:

Characters are given a second “deployment” class, which represents their position on the ship and the actions they can take in ship to ship combat. This not only means that ship to ship combat can actually happen ( unlike the limp pre-boarding actions of default spelljammer), but they get a chance to grow and customize their character. These deployments are synergistic with how their mechanics work, facilitating a feeling that the crew is actually working together.

Lost of gear and upgrades for ships, which make a great resource sync for a mid to high level party that’s sorely lacking in default d&d.

A well fleshed out “power” system for the engineer to tinker with. I’ve had lots of players who’ve wanted to fulfill this role before but I’ve never seen a better version of it in numerous other space games.

Actual timeframes for how long it takes to get places at both impulse and warp speed to provide a guideline for narration and adventure building

An actual navigation system for ships that’s so good I’m considering backwards engineering it into regular exploration rules. Simple enough to breeze over in non-hostile situations but perfectly tuned to be a centerpoint of mid combat drama for those characters who want to do more than shoot things.

A mechanical tug of war: Apart from other controversies with Spelljammer’s release ( which I’m not going to get into here), the main problem is that the audience for d&d has grown so large that they’re never going to be happy with one level of complexity. On one hand you have a casual audience who’s entertained with doing the yearly cinematic adventure module, and standing on the exact opposite side of the room from them are the people who are furious they didn’t get an update to the super clunky rules from 2nd edition. Between them are the ACTUAL core d&d audience, people who are into the game enough to want some mechanical complexity but not so much that they want their enjoyment of things choked out by having to refer to a chart every 10 minutes.

In my personal opinion, we are best served by remembering that 5e was built on the idea of having a streamlined core system into which rules modules ( which would hopefully be equally streamlined) could be slotted, dialing up focus and complexity as needed depending on the different campaigns you ran. 5e was never meant to be a comprehensive ruleset, and even if WotC has forgotten to do the actual work, we the audience can kitbash something together to get the game the way we want it.... not that we should actually have to. 

It’s not space, and that’s the point:  what makes the spelljammer setting so interesting is that it’s a radical departure from most other “realistic” scifi settings out there.  It harkens back to Flash Gordon, Jules Verne, and Edger Rice Boroughs, the things that inspired starwars and the original d&d. Planets that are the forgotten colonies of long vanished empires, mad tyrants ruling haunted moons, smuggler ports built into asteroid fields, all these things are shlocky, pulpy, and/or campy as hell and we should lean into that when we’re considering spelljammer adventures in the future. Personally I can’t even think about the name without imagining vast reaches of stars and nebula matter resounding with the sounds of a sickass 80s inspired guitar solo. Where I think the reboot fails conceptually is that it’s ossified: the same weird but not too weird iconography and alien species from the original publishing without daring to make it any more wild. I’ve been hearing about the gun hippos since I got into the hobby 20 years ago, they’ve surely had more interesting ideas since then, right?

Here’s some kitchen sink ideas to help make your wildspace a little more wild:

 It’s not a lack of air that’ll kill you in the astral sea, it’s a lack of coherence. If the astral sea is the realm of dreams and thought from which gods and worlds are born, it’s safe to say that the major threat to travellers isn’t the cold vacuum we’d expect from our own off-planet adventures. Instead, prolonged exposure to the astral risks a character becoming less and less real, slowly hollowed out into a barely-there concept of their former self. Ships, celestial bodies, and void suits assert a degree of reality in the space around them, not just providing an environment where characters CAN breathe, but an environment in which they MUST, in order to prevent their respiratory system from being forgotten. Similarly this is why you need to pack food and other supplies from a physical world (narratively encouraging trade and battles over resources), because eating nothing but imagined delicacies or simply ignoring your body’s need to eat is liable to make your digestive system imaginary as well

When I read the entry on astral elves, I couldn’t help but be horrified: entire empires of immortals who never slept, ate, or aged, existing in a perpetual state of emotional and chronological detachment. While the packed in adventure did paint some of these elves as the villains, I feel as if they didn’t do enough to follow through on the concept. Knowing how badly sensory deprivation fucks with the human mind, I couldn’t help but imagine the astral elves as twitchy, impulse driven wrecks existing only in the moment and carrying around tens of millennia of unresolved trauma. We’ve seen space empires before, but what we haven’t seen are derelict warships of maddened immortals hurdling towards conflict with eons of combat experience and an unquenchable desire to feel something, ANYTHING, even if it means ramming your ship along with theirs into an asteroid to ensure a confrontation.  Elves as warboys, tell me that doesn’t rule.

If you want the age of sail/pulp scifi themes of spelljammer to be anything more than a surface level aesthetic, consider reading up on some of the underlying economics that fuelled it, namely colonialism, slavery, and the exploitation of the frontier. While it’s perfeclty fine to have a rose-tinted cosmos where people adventure for adventures sake, WotC’s own missteps with the hadozee show that its all too easy to step into fucked up territory if we’re not mindful.  Suffice to say, if you’re going to have space pirates in the space caribbean, figure out who’s growing the space spices they’re raiding from the space merchants.

Also, for those who might want direct access to my catalogue of adventures:

Astral

Sailing

Spelljammer

[quillquiver]

On SPN, Burying Your Gays, and Being Heard

I am shaking, I feel sick, I feel like I’m insane. And did I run a little wild with the theories? You bet. But you know what didn’t help? The botched clusterfuck that was this entire goddamn finale debacle. How was I supposed to believe anything they said in panels when M&G dialogue would leak saying the exact opposite? How was I supposed to grieve and move on when there was nothing from the cast and crew? Nobody said anything! And any info leaked just destabilized what we already knew or directly contradicted what we’d been told. In light of that, how was I supposed to trust anything anyone said? One rogue translator reciprocated the love confession and I was practically sold, because there were so many questions surrounding the English text that this was something good, something that logically fit, and something I wanted to hold onto. 

Because they hurt me. This is about so much more than one episode or a ship; for years queer fans have seen ourselves in these characters and been told that we were crazy. That we were reading too much into it. I’m not sure how people get upset and offended when a storyline that doesn’t exist... doesn’t exist! said Guy Bee (2013). And then, after all of that, they turned around and said magnanimously, you have your version, I have mine... and that’s okay. But it’s not okay. It’s not okay, because that doesn’t erase what came before - that doesn’t erase the baiting and the gaslighting, and that invalidates everything we felt in the time leading up to that episode. It gave them an open window for all the subtext that came after. It allowed them to brush us off.

And then we got Cas’s love confession. I watched that scene about 500 times. Added to the rest of the season - to the fandom avatar being presented as successful and intelligent, to arc being the death of the author - I felt seen. Really seen, by a show that made it its mission to erase me. I had been okay with Cas dying at first because I had been sure the romance arc would carry through. I had been convinced that after everything, there was no way they would give that to us and then take it away.

But they did, because this is Supernatural. To anyone saying this is not bury your gays, I implore you to read up on the Hays Code. This link is to an amazing queer history podcast and the episode that covers it. In short, the Hays Code was a legal document that came about in 20th Century Hollywood during the puritanical war on the American entertainment industry,  and it stipulated what was not allowed on screen. Not all of it was queer - there’s a whole section about kissing - but what the Code is most remembered for is that queerness was not allowed on screen. But queer people are resilient, and so they started testing the waters... and it turned out that you could in fact code queerness into a narrative, as long as it was subtextual, or as long as the queer character died/was punished, or both. The point is that the character is not allowed to live their truth openly. They are buried, either in the ground or punished in the narrative. The former is normally what we refer to these days, because the latter just doesn’t really happen anymore.

Until Supernatural. 

Castiel is immediately punished for speaking his truth - and please don’t tell me he leveraged that punishment and so he had agency. Literally the only thing that could make him happy was confessing his feelings, and so the Empty deal was directly related to this idea of queerness-as-punishment. That being said, Bobo wrote a beautiful scene. Cas’s confession was a love letter to queerness and coming out... but everything that came after buried him. Castiel may have ended the series alive but he was effectively written out of the last two episodes, and that means that he actually never really got to live his truth. He was silenced by the narrative - that is punishment. 

Dean is a whole other can of worms. Does one rogue translator confirm canon bi!Dean? Or do we have to read our own version of the text? The fact that we even have to ask these questions firmly places us in the realm of queerbaiting. Were the writers trying to get bi!Dean approved but were unable to? I have no idea, but queerbaiting requires proof that the writers encouraged a reading they had no intent of following through on, and we certainly don’t lack in evidence of that. Not from this writers room, but from those of previous eras. Did these writers try? They might have, but the funny thing about queerbaiting discourse is that there has never been a show to bait this long, and I’m making the call that even if you tried at the end, you baited me with half the ship and all the years that came before. 

Of course, the narrative leaves open the possibility of bi!Dean so if you do read the show that way, that means Dean also falls into the bury your gays category; if you read the show this way - which many of us do - the mere suggestion that Dean Winchester was bisexual was enough to punish him. And he was punished. We’ve all written extensively on this, but he was given a random death, on a case his father never finished. All that growth, all that time spent having him accept himself, love himself, that was all taken away. He died the way he always thought he would: as a tool, in service of his father, protecting his brother. He had always believed he’d been a body to throw on the sword and in the end that’s all he was. And when he gets to Heaven? He’s also silenced. He barely speaks in the episode except to monologue during his death, and that is 100% Sam-centric. He is scared. 

It was horrific to watch. I sobbed so hard my roommate was seriously concerned. 

I had been fully prepared for Supernatural to end disappointingly. I had figured everything would end with a huge heaven reunion because white, straight, cis-male S&F writers love the idea of death as a reward, but instead of being disappointed I felt like I had witnessed a slaughter. Every single one of the queer themes intrinsic to the show: found family, resilience, speaking your truth... were gone. And I know we’ve talked about this too, but it bears repeating, because in doing this, in writing the queerness out of its narrative, Supernatural effectively looked every one of us queer folx in the eye and said: you are not important. You don’t matter. All of that stuff that came before is all good and well, but what really matters at the end of all things is blood family. It’s two brothers in a car. Life sucks but at least we get to die and go to paradise - real paradise, that your angel buddy died for and then made for you and who we never hear from again.

I felt insane. I felt cheated. I felt humiliated. I felt devastated. I still feel all those things, but listen to me. You have been heard. Not by Misha Collins, who is a great guy, but doesn’t get it. Not by Jensen Ackles, who is a similarly great guy, but also just doesn’t understand. And not by anyone else who worked on this show. 

You know who heard you? Me. The people who follow me. The people who follow you. We saw each other, and heard each other, and we gave each other a leg up. We made memes. We wrote fic. We drew fanart. We made gifs. All for ourselves and all for each other. We broke Tumblr multiple times. We donated over $60,000 USD to multiple different causes. We got multiple hashtags trending at multiple different points, and today kept it up because we demanded answers and then we got them. There were at least 5 articles written about the show today. We made that happen. We made people listen. 

Supernatural didn’t deserve me, and it didn’t deserve you. It didn’t deserve Dean. It didn’t deserve Cas. It didn’t deserve Misha and Jensen. But this show ended with a bleak, awful message and we turned around and showed them that love is loud. So what about all of this is real?

We are.

[kirishimaswife2819]

Them With a Foreign S/o || Midoriya, Bakugou, Kirishima, Todoroki, and Kaminari

Masterlist

Pairings: Izuku Midoriya x foreign!Reader, Katsuki Bakugou x foreign!Reader, Eijiro Kirishima x foreign!reader, Shoto Todoroki x foreign!reader, and Denki Kaminari x foreign!reader

Requested by Anonymous: hello! could i request some headcanons with the boys wherein their s/o's a foreigner? like, they have trouble speaking japanese and all. thank you and i hope you have a lovely day! <33

Word Count: 1.4k

Notes: Everything in italics is spoken in Japanese, h/c=home country

A/n: Hi! Thanks for requesting! I hope I wrote this well. Sorry that Kiri’s is sort of short, I couldn’t think of anything else for him. Hope you enjoy these- Danielle <3

Izuku Midoriya:

Izuku thinks it’s really cool that you are foreign

He’ll ask you a lot of questions about your home country, and be really patient with you as you try to explain it in Japanese

He does seem to notice that you have a bit of a hard time expressing yourself or showing your real personality while your talking in Japanese, just because you don’t know the right words to say

So, he starts learning your native language, so it’s easier for the two of you to talk to each other and get to know each other better

He revealed to you that he was learning your native language, and after that, you two tutored each other in each other’s language

Once you could finally be yourself around Izuku, the two of you got along pretty well and you two ended up with crushes on each other

You two got together, because you overheard him talking to one of his friends about how he had a crush on you and didn’t know what to do about it

“You should ask me out.”

“I already-” He paused when he realized that the voice did not come from his friend, and instead from behind him, and then he realized it was your voice and his face turned beet red

Anyways, you ended up confessing your feelings for him as well and you two got together

He always asks questions about where you’re originally from and he has a whole page in his notebook about your favorite things to do at home, and fun facts about your hometown

Since you haven’t had a whole ton of Japanese foods, or done activities that were common in Japan, he likes taking you on dates specifically to do things exclusive to Japan

If there’s a certain snack you like from your country that isn’t available in Japan, and you tell Izuku, he’ll order it online for you, and have it shipped to you, so you can still have it

Katsuki Bakugou:

At first, he thought you were really stupid

How were you supposed to become a hero when you can’t even understand half the shit that your classmates are saying?

But over time, he found himself liking your personality

He liked your determination to become a hero, even if you were having trouble understanding your classmates

I feel like Bakugou speaks multiple languages, so he would be able to talk to you in your first language

The two of you actually became friends, because he got sick of you messing up your Japanese

You were saying something to Mina, who was waiting patiently while you tried to figure out how to explain it in Japanese

Bakugou was listening in and the second he heard you mess up a word, he went, “God, it’s not that fucking hard.”

“Bakugou! Don’t be mean to them. They’re trying,” Mina said, scolding the ash blonde

“Do you want to teach me?” You question, sarcastically of course, switching back to your native language, since you knew Bakugou knew it

“If it’ll keep you from speaking in that shitty Japanese then yeah.”

And that’s how your relationship with Bakugou began

Every Wednesday and Friday night, you would go over to his dorm and he would practice Japanese with you for a few hours. He was kind of mean about it, and scolded you when you messed up, but you were quickly learning Japanese

Over time, you two ended up getting pretty close and became friends, and eventually he confessed his feelings for you and you two started dating

You two now talked in Japanese most of the time, but you would still unconsciously switch back to your native language, since it was what you were used to

If you’re ever homesick, Bakugou will make you some kind of food that is from your country and he knows that you like, and then he’ll watch a movie from your country with you

Eijiro Kirishima:

Kirishima is actually the first friend you make at U.A.

I know I say that in a lot of my different headcanon posts, but come on, he’s way too nice and accepting to not be your first friend

Whenever you guys first met, he was so patient while you tried speaking Japanese

He offers to teach you Japanese, but he low key sucks at teaching stuff, so after he realizing he’s not really helping, he finds an app for you to download on your phone that can help you learn more (if you don’t already have one)

Once your pretty fluent in Japanese, the two of you get along even better now that you’re able to communicate better

Eventually he confesses his feelings for you and the two of you get together

He likes when you tell stories about things that have happened to you in your old country, or crazy things that have happened in your hometown

He’ll commonly look up recipes from your country, and try to make them with you

Shoto Todoroki:

When Shoto found out that you were foreign, he really didn’t care all that much

You were just another student in his class, why should he be more curious about you than he would anybody else?

At least that’s what he thought, up until Aizawa paired you two up for a project

Shoto had a tendency to correct your Japanese whenever you two were talking, not realizing that it may hurt your feelings or embarrass you

He only realized this when he was working on the project with you in the library, and Midoriya was right next to the two of you and he kept hearing Shoto correct you

So Izuku pulled him off to the side and told him to stop correcting you, because it’s probably embarrassing you

After that, Shoto felt sort of bad, but he felt it would be more awkward if he apologized, so he didn’t

While you two worked on the project, Shoto got to know you and ended up developing a little crush on you

He talked to Midoriya about this, and he told Shoto that he should ask you out

He wasn’t sure how he should do it, so he asked Midoriya again, and he suggested that Shoto should learn how to ask you out in your native language and then ask you out like that

Shoto did it and it worked

He helped you learn Japanese better, and your relationship was going great

He doesn’t really pay any special attention to the fact that you’re from a different country, he only really remembers it when you two are going out to eat and you ask about what a certain food is and if it’s good or not

Denki Kaminari:

Denki got so excited when he found out that there was going to be a foreign student coming to U.A.

The second he saw you, he immediately was attracted to you and wanted to ask you out

So, the second you sat down in your new class before class started, he was up immediately and flirting with you

But since you didn’t know very much Japanese, you had no idea what he was saying, so you just sort of brushed it off

Denki got kind of upset about it, and just left you alone, since it was obvious that you didn’t like him

He only realized that you didn’t understand him when he was telling his friends about it later, and they told him that you probably didn’t know much Japanese

You ended up looking up half the things he said to you after school that day, and blushed when you realized he was complimenting you

The next day you walked up to him in class and apologized for brushing him off, before explaining the situation, which he already knew

You two ended up getting along pretty well

Before you two got to know each other, he just found you attractive because of your looks, but now he found you attractive because of your looks and personality

Eventually, he admits his feelings for you, and you return them, so you two start dating

For some reason, he loves to flex that you’re from a different country

Like if anybody says that you’re a cute couple, he’ll be like “Yeah, I know. They’re from h/c.”

He’ll sometimes ask what a certain word means in your native language, so he can compliment you in that language

He tries to learn the whole language, but it confuses him way too much

He even tries watching some of his favorite films, but in your native language, but he always gets bored halfway through and turns on the Japanese version

[flownintothesun]

     𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐘 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 — his heart smashes into his chest as though it’s stopped and been violently started again — like he’s gasping out air, choking up seawater, except....except that when he’d gone under, he’d still been able to breathe. How the fuck is he supposed to know what he wants to do with Elio when his mind is swirling like a maelstrom — angry and violent and moving too fast for him to make sense of anything — even — no, especially himself? He’s always known he was different — first with the accidents on his former Captain’s ship — and then when that same Captain had aged and died, and he hadn’t changed a day — still bearing the freckles of youth, the audacity and the zeal for life all those years later. He carries that man’s name — the man who pulled him out of the sea. McCarthy.

      He’s wondered many times since Angus McCarthy had pulled him out of the North Sea if doing so wasn’t a bad omen — if he was never meant to leave. He’s scoured that sea and all the others, and the oceans, looking for something nameless — something that calls to him. Something that can explain who he is or where he comes from. It’s all he wanted. To know why. He’d never wanted to face the red-eyed creature in the mirrors, it’s why he’d covered them. It’s why he never wanted to feel anything — because if he could keep the world at an arm’s distance — no one could hurt him, and he would hurt no one in return.

      He blinks, and his body jerks — in his mind, in his memory, he knows that they can’t contain him. But who is they? What are they containing? They’ve given him so many names. So many legends. So much time — so much treasure — so much death.

      Blood trickles from his nose and into his mouth. It’s all so terribly human — feels so achingly mortal. “Darkness is nothing but an absence of light,” he mutters, almost nonsensically — lost in his own head, trying to pull up the memories just lingering there at the periphery. It’s so dark at the bottom of the ocean — an entirely different world, its own ecosystem. When it had been created, it had not been meant to be accessible to humankind. Humankind destroys that which it does not understand — that which is not precisely like them. It’s why there’s no magic left in the world. Not like there once was. It’s almost all gone now.

        — the fuck? The fuck? What is it all supposed to mean? Westley’s eyes snap up to Elio’s, and they are human-colored again, but blown wide in surprise. The black veins in his arms remain, but scale has rushed from one hand up to his elbow now — gills tearing through the side of his throat. It feels like a nightmare and he wants it to stop. He’s wanted for so long to remember something and now he doesn’t want to remember at all. Outside, he can hear the kraken call, the storm splashing the sea around his boat like a toy in bathwater. Seawater pours down the stairs as another wave hits them. They will not sink. He already knows that.

      The laceration on his neck is slowly healing, and he reaches up to touch it. “You should leave well enough alone, Elio,” Westley warns, and his voice comes out in strange octaves, as though multiple versions of him are speaking at once. “I don’t know what I’m capable of. I am not as I once was — I am more, and I am less. Do not test my patience or my mercy — you’re human... like them. Did you know? Did you know what they were planning to do to me? Is this the act? The illusion? To let my death in through the front door only for it to call itself love?”

Had he noticed the crew was growing restless? Yes, but he still hadn't thought a mutiny would break out. Elio had wanted to warn Westley but they had chained him up and there were too many of them so he had been stuck while everything unfolded on the ship. So many things have happened in such a short span of time that his brain hardly has any time to process any of it. Not until it's all over. Not that over is the right word but… It's just the two of them now on the ship. At least he doesn't think anyone else is still alive. Not now the screaming had stopped and silence had settled in. It might be a good thing that he hasn't seen any of it. However, the screams and other noises had been telling enough, and now the captain was here, covered in blood, eyes looking bright red, for once he didn't have an answer straight away. His entire body is shaking and yes he is terrified but at the same time he has always known deep down there was something different about Westley. Not just because of the stories that surrounded him but of the way he acted. At least now he knew why he kept running and why he never opened up to him or anyone for that matter.

Was this what all the characters in his book had truly felt? Had the stories he had been reading his entire life been more than just stories? Had they all contained truth in them? He is clueless as to what Westley is but he does know some things.

"If you are the darkness then why haven't you killed me yet?" Elio finally questions, no longer trying to escape his chains even if they are bound so tightly his hands are starting to go numb. "For the record, I didn't mean to fall in love with you it just happened…" His voice is shaky and he takes in a few deep breaths to try and calm himself down to no avail. "They tried to kill you. I'm not saying what you did was right or that I understand it all but… You're not just the darkness that you claim to be. You're more than that."

Because if he was truly just darkness then how could they have shared so many intimate moments together that had been beautiful? How could he have told stories and sang songs that touched everyone who listened to them? Had all of that just been a mask he had used all this time? Could one keep up a mask all this time? He didn't quite know, how could he? Right now he isn't sure of anything but he can't deny that despite everything he still feels drawn to him like a magnet. None of this is making any sense. Part of him wishes he had never fallen for that smile back at the bar and set foot on this ship but the other part… The other rebellious part of him has no regrets.

"So what are you going to do to me then?" He asks, eyes wide while looking at the Captain because the realization has just hit him. He's the only person still on this ship, the only witness of all of this. As if anyone would believe him if he told any of this. Would this mean he was going to die? And if so why does that thought not terrify him as much as it should? It would mean he never got to say goodbye to his parents or see them one last time. Would they assume he had died in an accident at sea? That was probably the most likely scenario. It might be better for them to think that than to know the truth. "If you are the monster that you claim to be you should probably toss me overboard as well or kill me. Quite ironic since you saved me that one day from falling overboard or was all of that an act too?"

Saving someone wasn't very much a monstrous thing now was it? He doubted he had faked anything during the night they had spent together afterward. No one could act that well.

[iamnmbr3]

I saw the ask about having the person feeling like that the Loki show is objectively bad. I liked the show, here is why.

I love Loki, and I love the MCU, but I don’t go into any of it expecting consistency. Tony and Loki are my favourite.

Tony goes through character development in his own movies, IM3 especially that main canon just kinda ignores. So I didn’t go into work he Loki show expecting them to get him consistent or right. I just went in prepared to enjoy the show for what it is in isolation. I also know that no one looks at the stories they write for the MCU critically, so I try and turn off that for a first time watch.

I really like the show, that doesn’t mean I think they made it consistent or in character for Loki. I get why people don’t like it.

I really like the TVA and all the concepts it introduced. I really liked seeing Tom acting his heart out. And I really like Loki/Sylvie because I find something very compelling about a character who hates themselves, meeting another version of themselves and being able to love them. It is not a ship I’m going to write fic about but I like them within the show.

Basically what I am saying is that I go into MCU media with the expectation they will mess up at least one character or plot point badly every time. I like the media for what it is, and I appreciate whatever it brings to the table that I can then cannibalise into da works.

Yeah that's fair. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. Fandom is better when there are a diversity of opinions and we can all respect each other and engage in open and good faith discussion rather than attacking people for having the "wrong" views or trying to harass them out of fandom.

For me personally I feel like the show fails on 3 fronts.

1) To me it fails as a Loki show. I really enjoy Loki as a character and I wanted a show about him. And I didn't personally see him in the show at all. I saw a completely different character who does not behave, speak, act, respond, react, stand, emote, or make choices like Loki does. He doesn't even LOOK like Loki because they did his hair and makeup wrong. And that's really what I wanted. I didn't want Larry (as I call the show character). I wanted Loki. That was what was advertised and to me he was so ooc that he was unrecognizable. If I just saw a clip out of context and didn't know what it was from I would have assumed I was seeing Tom in a totally different role.

Thor Ragnarok felt like a different take on Loki that definitely retconned some of his personality and history, but still felt like an alternate interpretation of the same character in the sense that I could recognize the character as Loki (albeit a different version of him); some people liked that, other didn't. But here it wasn't that. It just felt like a completely new (and to me far less interesting and compelling) character. And beyond that it felt like the show went out of its way to make a mockery of the character played by Tom and by extension anyone who ever cared about Loki's character. Like it felt like a mean spirited caricatured parody. Loki is also extremely sidelined in what is supposed to be his own show. And it most certainly didn't feel like a show about Loki, which is what I wanted. So for me the show didn't provide what I was looking for.

2) To me it also fails on its own merits. If I view it in isolation without comparing it to previous canon and just view it as its own thing it also fails. The quality of the dialogue felt very poor. None of the humor made me laugh and it all felt very juvenile and forced. The plotting and characterization seemed nonsensical and all over the place. Like Sylvie sets off those charges and the episode ends on a cliffhanger with that but then it's never addressed later.

The reason that Loki and Syvie allegedly falling in love breaks the timeline didn't really make sense. Sylvie is going around murdering timekeepers and yet Mobius somehow immediately like and trusts her and says he prefers her to Loki. Loki and Sylvie are simultaneously presented as the same person and also totally different people. Loki allegedly learns self love but we never see that - we see him call himself degrading things like pathetic. And we see him think that Sylvie is better than him. That doesn't seem like self love. The romance feels extremely rushed and unrealistic and awkward and we aren't given a compelling reason for why they are in love or what they even have in common. Sylvie doesn't really have much of a character. Mobius and Loki don't interact much and Mobius consistently mistreats him but Loki somehow thinks of him as a friend. Mobius is portrayed as a good guy for cheerfully carrying out the TVA's ends but Kang is a villain for creating the TVA. The TVA seems to be all made up of humans even though it's in charge of all reality.

If Loki did bad things, then the TVA did worse things and thus are not moral authorities. If the TVA’s actions are acceptable then so are Loki’s. If Loki was wrong to violently impose his will on a planet (let’s forget about the context with Thanos for a minute) then the TVA is wrong to violently impose its will on all of reality in order to eliminate free will. If Loki was wrong to kill a few people, then the TVA was certainly wrong to kill trillions. And thus neither Mobius nor the TVA are moral authorities when it comes to Loki because they are infinitely worse. If the actions that Mobius and the TVA took are acceptable, then there is no reason to criticize Loki because he did far less than them. Etc etc etc.

The cinematography is also very poor and unprofessional and the costumes look extremely cheap and unprofessional. The whole story feels confused and disjointed. The directing is bad because the actors are all very capable but the performances often feel wooden and forced and fake. And the pacing is terrible. A lot of it drags and then plot twists come out of nowhere with no setup so it just makes them feel jarring rather than earned or entertaining. 

3) To me it also fails on a moral front. The show contains a lot of problematic depictions and messages and promotes messages that are offensive or even downright harmful.

Mobius gleefully subjects Loki to physical torture by leaving him to be repeatedly beaten in the genital area. This is a very clearcut and straight forward example of physical torture. And Mobius feels no compassion for Loki or remorse over what he has done to him. If anything he seems to find it amusing. And certainly the audience is supposed to find it amusing (which is gross and harmful messaging on Disney’s part). He also subjects Loki to psychological torture. This is a fact. There are multiple instances in the show where the TVA and Mobius subject Loki to treatment that would meet the legal definition of torture under both US law and international law. Furthermore, Mobius and the TVA are holding Loki against his will and forcing him to labor without compensation or any hope of release because they view him as belonging to a group of people (Variants) that they view as inferior and not really people. That’s a pretty textbook case of slavery. So objectively Mobius is Loki’s jailer, torturer, captor, and enslaver. And yet Mobius is presented as justified in what he does to Loki. The writer and director have even called it therapy. And a result many people have parroted this which is very harmful.

The queer “representation” feels straight out of bigoted propaganda. Loki’s personality traits have been retconned to map onto harmful stereotypes about queer men. He is overly expressive, makes grand gestures, is flamboyant, cowardly, dishonest, weak, bad at fighting, lazy, spineless, meek, unused to exercise etc. Now a person could be all these things and also happen to be queer. However, Loki was never like this before. His character was retconned to be this way only in this series where he is confirmed to be queer.

Furthermore, the entire premise of the series seems to be that it is funny and entertaining and justified when Loki is dehumanized, mocked, humiliated, hurt, tortured, beaten, assaulted, and/or robbed of his dignity. That’s the premise. That’s the whole show.

In addition to pro torture and pro authoritarianism and pro victim blaming messaging the show also has problematic depictions of black characters  (see here and here), Asian people (see here) and also has a lot of fludphobia and transphobia issues. And much more.

@nikkoliferous has put together a great compendium here of various posts explaining the various issues with the show if you're curious about why some people disliked it.

[gar-trek]

I review killing time (or whatever)

Okay, yes this review has taken me forever and that’s because there’s so much I want to say, and most of it has very little to do with the plot of the book. I cut down a lot of this so you guys could just get to the main point of what I’m trying to say, so I apologize if this is a little brief or incomprehensible to those who haven’t read the book. 

And also, before I get into it, I would like to say rest in peace to the author Della Van Hise, who passed away in march of this year. She contributed a lot to the fandom, especially in regards to K/S fiction, as well as publishing a lot of non-trek related work during her life. 

First of all, if you have heard of Killing Time, there is probably one specific reason for that. It’s the same reason I picked up the book in the first place and why it’s really even a topic of discussion on this site. To put the story quite briefly, Killing Time was recalled during its initial release on account of the book having too many slash elements (aka, the relationship between Kirk and Spock could be read as sexual/romantic). I first heard about the book here in this post where the history of it is worded to sound like one very dramatic mystery. One user (no shade intended here) even goes as far as to say the book was recalled by old Gene himself! Now I’m always one for drama and such, but after reading the book I looked into it a little more, and I don’t think that’s exactly how it went down. 

Here you can find multiple statements from the author herself, in which she tells the whole story. According to her, the book publisher accidentally released an unedited manuscript that was never supposed to make it to the public. So technically the publisher did not recall the book because it was “too gay”, they recalled it because they printed a version that was never meant for the public to see anyway. These were the edits that were specifically requested by Paramount, who the publishers were supposed to go through to get the final okay on all material. And like, yeah, all of Paramounts edits were pretty much to delete any sentence where Spock and Kirk are tender to each other, they were trying to make is less homoerotic, obviously. I understand why this slight distinction may not make much of a difference to you guys, but for me it’s important to note that the book wasn’t recalled because it was too gay, it was just never supposed to be gay in the first place. It doesn’t make that fact any better, but it does make it less dramatic, in my opinion. I encourage you to read the statements from the author on this topic though, because she gives the whole story a lot better then I just did. 

Now to address the main question at hand, does Killing Time depict a romantic relationship between Kirk and Spock, or is it all just hype? (in layman's terms, is the book gay or not?) and to answer quite plainly, yes it’s gay. of course it is. but then to answer less plainly, no. What the fuck do i mean by this? well let me try and explain. 

I read the second edition of the book, aka the censored version, but I also followed along with the first edition (using this great article). The changes made to the book did not effect the plot at all, and were really only minor things. Notably, in the second edition they just kind of left out any part where Spock and Kirk touch each other (and I don’t mean in a sexual way). For example, there is a scene where Spock and Kirk are having a serious conversation in the ships garden. In the first edition, at the end of the conversation Spock places a hand on Kirks shoulder, which Kirk covers with his own hand. In the second addition, all mentions of this simple contact are deleted. The differences between the two are mostly little things like this. There is no secret sex scene or love confession hidden in the first addition. You see, in my opinion, the changes made to the second edition of the book do very little to censor the romantic undertones between Kirk and Spock. That’s because they are ingrained in the plot line itself. 

One very important aspect to this book is that Kirk and Spock share a mental bond. This is something that can only happen between a Vulcan and another when they are extremely close. The mental bond that Kirk and Spock share is so strong in this book, it’s even present when they enter an alternate dimension where they are strangers to one another. There is a romance in this book between two original characters, and their relationship is constantly being paralleled by that of Kirk and Spock. And, maybe most telling, Spock refuses a female Romulan who is very interested in him over and over again simply because Kirk exists. And no, that’s not an exaggeration, here is a line from when the Romulan woman was begging Spock to be in a relationship with her: 

“I need you. The Empire needs you, what more can there be?”

“James Kirk” the Vulcan murmured without hesitation.

That line is in both versions of the book. What I’m trying to say is yes, there are K/S elements in Killing Time. There are many tender moments and lots of talk about Kirk and Spock’s devotion to each other. 

So now you’re asking yourself, Gar, why did you just say earlier that “no, the book is not gay”? Well, that’s because it’s not. This isn’t a K/S book. This isn’t a piece of Spirk fanfiction. Because for as much as this book is about Kirk and Spock’s relationship, it’s even more about Romulans (and more specifically, that one girlboss Romulan Commander from the Enterprise Incident.... bet ya didn't see that coming!) That’s right, the most controversial Star Trek book ever published is at it’s core quite plainly just a Star Trek book. There is weird alternate dimensions, time travel, espionage and lots and lots of Romulans! 

Alright, alright, what I’m really trying to get at here is that yes, if you read into Killing Time there is K/S elements. I mean for god sake the author was a known K/S fanfic writer, that wasn’t a secret by any means. If she wrote their relationship a little more tenderly than most authors would have, can we really be surprised? But writing a K/S story was not her intention here, and that’s not what this is. I think the author put it best herself, so I’m just going to put that here: 

“If people chose to see overtones of K/S in it, maybe it’s because there were overtones of K/S throughout Star Trek itself.”

People will hype up killing time as some secret confirmation that K/S is real and canon, and I really get that. Like, it would be really nice to have some canon acknowledgment of K/S, and I really don’t blame people for acting like that’s what this is. But that really isn’t what this is. And even if there was some kind of love confession, I really hate to break it to you, but the Star Trek novels are just fancy fanfiction and are not considered canon by any stretch (excluding the one Gene wrote himself, which let’s face it, perhaps has the most K/S elements of all). 

If you are looking for a nice story about Kirk and Spock being in love, then I very much urge you to look at Ao3 or similar sites. Skip this, if you want a K/S story, because that’s not what this is. Now, if you’re a huge fan of the Romulan commander from the Enterprise Incident, then my GOD you have to read this. I think this was a pretty solid Trek book. It was no piece of literary genius, but it got the job done. There was a lot of it that I think could have been left out, because it the later half it started to drag horribly, and we got a few plot threads that went absolutely nowhere. I’m not sure I’m much of a fan of alternate universes, as I really really enjoy the established dynamic of the characters, but it didn’t bother me too much. But I mean hey man, there was defiantly parts where I was so invested I couldn’t put the book down. Give this one a read if you’re looking for a pretty interesting Trek book with a little bit of cheeky K/S sprinkled here and there. 

If you have given the book a read, or just have thoughts in general, I’d love to hear them! 

[helisol]

dude im not sure you will get it after reading this either, but you Can read it now

okay so first of all do not expect me to adhere to rules of grammar or Proper capitalisation, I am writing from the heart

so it’s been said before by other people but if Quark and Odo didnt look like the aliens that they are but instead like two regular prettybois the fandom would do cartwheels over their dynamic and Not call them a crack ship. because really, their dynamic fucking SLAPS and I’m here to tell you Why.

their surface-level dynamic is “Respected and Talented Security Chief and Cunning Immoral Businessman who are in Love but pretend not to be” and that's just an off-brand version of enemies to lovers! which is excellent and for some people that’s all you really need to get invested in a ship.

but some people look at it and go “Hm, no, that’s not enough. I mean, they work as friends but it doesn’t really have to be romantic.” and to that I say you are Absolutely Valid, not everything has to be romantic.

it just so happens that these two fuckers have one of the most compelling romance stories ever, and it’d be a shame not to explore it.

so before I dive into the internalised homophobia and repression, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Quark as a character.

because if you have brainworms like me you can kind of see that its an honest to god greek tragedy.

this guy comes from a race of people where being kind, ethical and fair is considered Abnormal and Horrifying. and I’m not gonna call Quark out of all people kind, ethical or fair but,,, 

you ever notice how he’s A Much Better Person Than Pretty Much All Other Ferengi?

dont get me wrong, Quark is still a bastard, but every once in a while his True Character shines through. and I say True Character because guys,,, the way he behaves around other people is an Act. he’s pretending to be something he’s not.

he has to try so hard to be a good ferengi it’s honestly painful to watch at times. because he is a SHIT ferengi! 

he loves his friends- because that's what the ds9 crew are. they’re his friends! and it makes him miserable because that's not! normal! for a ferengi!

let’s compare Quark and Rom for a second. 

Quark reeks of self loathing because a lot of the time he just Doesn’t act like a ferengi is supposed to, and this drives a lot of conflict in the show. he knows how a ferengi should act, it’s just that he can’t!! fucking!! do it!! but he still tries and tries to fit into that mold, which straight up ruins his life on multiple occasions.

Rom is also not a Model Ferengi, but he lives without hating himself. and it’s mostly because he doesn’t care about how a ferengi Should act, he’s loved and cared for even when everybody knows that he’s a shit ferengi! because his non-ferengi-ness works to his benefit. it encourages and highlights his abilities as an engineer. the success and love he finds make it easy for him to be content with his true self. Unlike Quark, who doesn’t get unconditional love from anyone.

its so!! tragic!! because you can see what Quark is really like!! his true self!! he’s a nice guy who cares for people!

its right there all the time and it's so blatantly obvious. especially in episodes like “Body Parts”, “Bar Association”, “The Way Of The Warrior” and “Ferengi Love Songs”

his own wiki page literally calls him “a compassionate and generous man by ferengi standards” which pretty much translates to “not really a good ferengi”.

anyway so Quark is a tragic figure or whatever but we’re actually here for the REPRESSED! HOMOSEXUAL! TENDENCIES! that he and Odo both exhibit.

with characters like garak you don’t really need to have brainrot to pick up on those tendencies, because that was something andrew robinson chose to do, on purpose. 

and to be fair, Quark wasn’t intended to be Any kind of representation, not even by the actor. I’m just pointing out that he Does look and act and talk like a little gayman.

I will admit that he is Painfully Straight in the text of the show, but on a meta level he’s just. a dude who has a serious case of repressing his real personality. and taking it a step further- he also represses his feelings towards another man.

and that man is Odo.

a few things on him:

Odo is literally desperate to be a person. unlike Quark, who at least has the comfort of belonging to a society of people with a set of rules and expectations, Odo has never met anyone or anything like him in all his years of life.

like, we all know Odo basically grew up in a lab, right? 

with people who didn’t know anything about him. who he was so unalike that they literally called him “Nothing”

but he still learned to look and talk and act like them (because if he didn’t he’d feel *pain* which is very fucked up by the way?)

so we know for a fact that Odo wants to be recognised as a person- which is why he tries really hard to conform to the ideals of the society that raised him. instead of exploring his nature as a shape shifter he maintains a humanoid form, picks up a job and creates an entire personality around what he wants to be seen as. but not what he really is.

and that's the thing that causes all the conflict between Quark and Odo. the type of person odo wants to be seen as is the polar opposite of whatever the fuck quark wants to be seen as.

In the same way that Quark acts like a Normal Ferengi, Odo acts like a Normal Security Officer.  and in a cruel twist of fate, the Ferengi happens to be the antithesis of the Security Officer.

If you only look at them as the things they act like, and not the things they are, you might say they’re way too different to like each other, right? 

but,,, if you think about the fact that they’re both putting on this act,,, this performance of idealised versions of themselves,,, you can see that they are The Same. They Are Both Gay Repressed Loser Aliens Who Try To Act Like Things That They Aren’t!

Imagine you’re Odo. 

Imagine that you’re Nothing, because you’re not like anything anyone has ever seen- and because you are Nothing you don’t fall in love with anyone for years and years. since who could love something that isn’t like them at all?

But then one day this Thing shows up in your path and you just hate it. Because it’s not like anything *you* have ever seen. It’s disorderly and looks grotesque and it’s criminal to boot.

It’s all the things you learned would make a “Bad Person” It’s everything you aspire not to be, because if you were any of those things you would BE PUNISHED.

But the trouble is, eventually he’s not an “it” anymore, he’s “Quark” and you see him every day of your miserable little life because you live on the same damn station in space and it’s hard to avoid each other.

He also happens to be one of the only things in your life that are constant. He will never leave because he is stubborn and greedy and you just *hate him so much* that you’re convinced he must be doing all of it to spite you. And yet you also can’t seem to leave him alone.

So Odo Must Hate Quark. everything else is a non sequitur for him. he can’t not hate Quark.

because Quark is, and i’m sincerely sorry to apply christian fucking imagery to this, The Forbidden Fruit.

If he liked quark he’d admit some kind of moral failing. it would be the end of his act. but on the other hand...it might be a good thing, because at least he could have quark.

but Odo can never go through with biting into this apple because the consequences are horrifying to him. he could never have quark because, according to his performance, he would Never like quark to begin with.

and here’s a take for you: Odo's Brand Of Internalised Homophobia Doesn't Stem From Heteronormativity. It Stems From The Fact That He Was Kind Of Assigned Asexual At Birth.

and the show sort of alludes to this, for real! not just subtext! canon! except the writers used the wrong person. 

because instead of Odo having these Forbidden Feelings for Quark he has them for,,, Kira.

but since this is My Quodo Manifesto you’ll understand that i am 100% willing to just toss that part of canon out the airlock.

so Odo does canonically have that mindset of “no one could ever love me”  for decades he repressed any and all feelings of love to avoid getting hurt. in the show he breaks this cycle of repression when he takes a chance and enters a relationship with Kira. yay?

but we all know that aint it chief. and part of the reason why That Ship Ain’t It is the fact that Quark is Right There. and he is simply the more interesting choice for odo.

he and Odo literally share the same problem and have weird intertwined character arcs! they are both dreadfully afraid of not conforming to the ideal versions of themselves, so they reject everything that could challenge their Performance!

on some fucked up level they hate each other *and* themselves individually. and this hatred makes them reject parts of their real identities for the sake of protecting their image. which. yknow. in gay people. is internalised homophobia!

so you can see that they’re both repressing A Lot even if you view them as Friends, but the most important thing in this kind of romantic dynamic is usually,,, when the characters *stop* repressing.

and the thing is. the thing that Kills Me with these two. They Never Get That Moment. Thats Why You Need The Brainrot To See Them As Romantic.

The Ascent gives us an example of what happens when they both take their act too far. I mean, who could forget “Fascist!” and “Fraud!” That is what odo thinks of quark’s performance and vice versa, but we don’t really hear them adress the fact that they *are* playing these roles to a ridiculous extent.

We also never get an example of what would happen if they dropped their act instead of over-performing it. or rather we don’t get to see both of them drop it.

And the reason why we never get that moment is because there’s this one key difference between Quark and Odo. 

Quark knows that he’s constantly repressing his true nature and his feelings for odo. We pretty much hear him say so in the iconic root beer scene in Way Of The Warrior. he knows that he’s not a good ferengi but he keeps up his act.

So quark is aware enough to feel that sweet sweet self loathing. But Odo isnt self loathing as much as he is just self sabotaging.

and this subtle difference between them is why, at the very end of the show, we get “That man loves me, can’t you see? It was written all over his back!”

this moment is quark dropping his act and asking odo to do the same. he wants to hear a genuine Goodbye from him because they have known each other for Decades and they are Friends. but odo is so unable to express the feelings he’s been repressing all these years. that he self sabotages again and just walks away.

even though this is like. very anticlimactic. considering I just spent 2000 words talking about how Odo and Quark are Most Certainly Gay For Each Other.

The fact that their ending is so Weird is the reason why quodo is so engaging and appealing to me? especially post-canon quodo.

like, the amount of “what if’s” this ship has are Astounding.

What if either of them had dropped their act a little sooner? What if they both did, for just a moment, and it was the straw that breaks the camels back?

What if Odo comes back after a few years? What if Quark comes to get him?

What if, in that moment in the finale where Quark drops his act, Odo had returned the gesture? What if Gag-Reel Quodo Kiss.gif Real?

with the depth that I read into their relationship, those what ifs are really fun to think about.

anyway its 1 am and i’m not an english major so literary analysis is not like, my strong suit. plus most of this was written in a late night screaming session with a friend who has the exact same opinions as me. i just think aliens hot and in love. thats all.

[yurimultiship]

A canon of many self-cest ships

I was finishing the Umineko no Naku Koro Ni manga while thinking of themes to talk about for Femslash February and well, this idea naturally popped-up.

Umineko is a canon in which a good amount of characters have multiple/alternate identities, which are at times depicted as different characters that can interact together. The story deals quite a bit with identities, the faces we show others, the ideal self we try to emulate, the self we need to build to protect ourselves/survive, etc.

How metaphorical or literal the depiction of some of those alternate selves is supposed to be is up to the readers to decide.

An early occurence (the first clear one, if I’m not misremembering) happens with Ushiromiya Eva, the second child and first daughter of the patriarch of the family.

When she was younger, she used to vent her troubles and issues to another version of herself, that represented her strong will to not give in to the partiarchal and extremely sexist views of her family. This other-self would encourage her and push her forwards, but it could also be seen as a vessel for all her frustrations, festering over the years. When Eva comes back to talk inheritance problems with her siblings to their father, this “younger self” reappears to encourage her in her attempts to get the title of family head for herself.

In the manga, the way it’s depicted definitely pinged my self-cest radar, with the multiple loving embraces they are depicted in. The interactions between those two Eva are both heartwarming at times, and scary when this “ghost of the past” appears to have a corrupting influence.

When it comes to it though, it’s hard to do better and shippier than Erika and Bernkastel.

Bernkastel is a witch, a being of which the existence is questioned by the story, and once again left up to the reader. If we do believe that witches exist, their powers make them appear like superior beings. With her magic, Bern brings an alternate human version of herself into the story to use as her pawn and shake things up. Erika is more than happy to serve, calling Bern her “master” and doing everything she can to get rewarded and acknowledged by her, fearing more than anything to disappoint her and be punished and cast away.

It’s a very interesting fucked-up relationship of two versions who have a really similar core in multiple aspects of their personality, but the power imbalance and the nature of their being show them in a very different light. Bern is at the top and Erika revers her for that while also wishing to reach such a position too to escape her lower condition and beat on the weak in turn. But inevitably, she is cruelly and sadistically brought low and disparaged by Bern for her failures.

Last but not least... I’d love to talk about our lovely lady Beatrice, the Golden Witch. Except how do you talk about Beato without falling into huge spoilers territory? Her true identity is the main mystery of Umineko, meaning it’s a complicated thing to discuss.

So let’s just mention that at one point, two “younger” versions of Beatrice, without all her memories, spend a good amount of time interacting together and trying to find the secret behind themselves. The way they go about it is certainly not devoid of innuendo, there’s even a bit of a class S kink, with the more mature version getting called “big sister/onee-sama”.

Anyway, the motto of Umineko is “Without love, it can’t be seen”, which clearly means that those who can see their alternative selves are in dire need of love from them (what? no I’m totally not bullshitting, I swear!)

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Omg give us ur rant abt hating d*rklina as a ship.. im petty

Okay Anon, so i saw this the other day and I wasn't in the right headspace to answer but i am now!

So to start off, I am firmly in the ship and let ship category. You like a ship, i don't care. That doesn't mean i won't rag on the ship itself but I don't send hate, I don't really engage with shippers from ships I don't like, and I am liberal with the block button and the blacklist feature. Cultivate your tumblr/online experience, y'all. You don't owe anyone on this hellsite (or any other) a damn thing.

However, I REALLY do hate d*rklina as a ship, and I have a big problem with the way the shippers talk about it, so I hope you were being serious about wanting a rant because here it goes.

As for the ship itself, i feel like the reasons I dislike it are pretty obvious and standard. It's abusive. He is her abuser. He manipulates her. He spends months grooming her and gaslighting her, intentionally trying to get her under his control so that when he literally enslaves her it will go over easier. He never actually loved her, he wanted to use her for her power. It's not complicated, it's not really 'up for debate', that is the way its written, and the author has explained that that was the intended interpretation of her work. I mean he literally sexually assaults her in the second book, and straight up tells her he's going to kill everyone she loves so that she has no choice but to fall to him because she is completely alone in the world. He threatens to skin her alive in the second book when they're on the boat, he has no problem torturing her to get Mal to do what he wants. That's not love. He does not love her. It's pretty black and white, its explicitly written as an abusive relationship. The point was to show how easily powerful men can manipulate and abuse young naive women who don't know any better and try to see the best in people. Alina 'fell' for the version of Darkles Sparkles that he intentionally created to try to control her. Nothing he told her was true, from his backstory, to them both being 'the only one like [each other]' (hello, baghra), to using Genya to convince Alina that Mal had abandoned her, everything he did was manipulation so that he could get her under his control. It is not a romance, it is not 'a ship war', d*rklina is not written as romantic. He is her abuser. Full stop.

There is also the point about him being just a generally horrible person all around. He's not morally grey. He just isn't. He sold an 11 year old into sex slavery, forced her to stay in that situation so he could use her, and then mutilated her when she defied him. He also groomed and abused Zoya, because he saw that she was exceptionally powerful and wanted to use her the way he wanted to use Alina. He enslaved Alina. He blinded and mutilated his own mother. He is a genocidal maniac. He shows no remorse, he doesn't care about anyone but himself and his own power. He is not the type of character that should be romantically shipped with anyone. If you like him, that's absolutely fine! One of my fave characters ever is Kai Parker from TVD. Dude was a straight up psychopath. He tried to kill multiple pairs of toddlers. He brutally murdered his pregnant sister AT HER WEDDING. He is a HORRIBLE person. But I think he's a brilliant character. But do I think he's a good guy, do I want him anywhere near any characters in that show in a romantic way (ehem b*nkai)? Absolutely fucking not. Being a fan of a villain character is fine, but fucking own that shit. Villains can be SUCH good characters, but they're still villains. Erasing the bad they've done so you can justify putting them in situations where they WILL harm the people around them because you can't level with yourself about the bad things they've done doesn't make you 'woke', it just makes you look like you don't understand the media you're consuming.

Which leads me to why I have such a problem with the way D*rklina shippers engage with the ship. They simultaneously wanna say "oh we know it's toxic/bad/abusive/etc., that's why we like it!" and then also they try to claim that it should be endgame, they romanticize scenes where he is abusing her (and by romanticize I mean they literally try to frame his abuse as romantic, not like "oh yeah my ship is interacting!!". those are different things. You can be excited about ship interactions without trying to say that things he is doing to her are actually romantic), they try to argue that he is morally grey/misunderstood/etc., and they straight up try to lie and say he's not her abuser.

If you wanna ship an abusive ship, own it. Be straight up about why you like it. It's okay to be into dark shit, y'all. It does NOT make you a bad person to be into dark shit. But this idea that fiction doesn't impact real life, and that people can't call the ship out for what it is is a problem is a very troubling trend in fandom. Nobody is saying you can't ship it, do what you want. But this idea that these people are 'oppressed' because fans of the show/book continue to point out the facts about the way the story was written and how the relationship is actually presented is fucking insane. Someone saying that D*rklina is abusive is not calling you out, they are stating a fact. It's the story as it was presented. You trying to say it's not makes it look like you have no reading comprehension. And this idea that 'well i'll be on the lookout for evil shadow wizards in real life lol' is such horse shit too. His shadow wizard powers aren't the issue. He is a powerful man who grooms and abuses young women. You're telling me you lived through the Me Too movement and you wanna act like thats not a real threat that young women face every day? You're telling me that you can't see that the actual real life connection you're supposed to be making here? Okay, well you should maybe deal with that and come back to me, because that's an issue.

Fiction is meant to teach us lessons. Darkles is meant to teach us something. He is meant to show us that sometimes, powerful men lie to, manipulate, groom, and abuse young women, and we should be aware of that. The story is about a young woman who is sucked into an abusive situation, and then she breaks free and in the end she is able to defeat her abuser. That is a really powerful story, and one that millions of real life women can relate too. To pretend that that story doesn't have real life connections makes you look insensitive and frankly, kind of cruel.

So basically, in the end, my biggest issue is that D*rklina shippers love to spout this nonsense about 'knowing' it's bad and that he's a villain, and 'that's why they like him', and then turn around and try to say that he's not actually the villain, he's not actually bad, and the things he does to Alina that are abuse are actually romantic and sweet. You wanna ship an abusive ship, you do you, but lets not pretend it's anything other than what it is, but romanticizing and normalizing abuse tactics so you can feel, what? morally superior? Cool? edgy and different? That has real life impacts. You are normalizing abuse. Real people will engage with that rhetoric, and it will make it difficult for them to see abuse when it happens to them or the people around them because they believe its romantic or normal to be treated that way.

You wanna be a villain stan? You wanna ship dark ships? Good on ya, but fucking own your shit, y'all.

[placesyoucallhome]

Trying to figure out what it is I need for a character to keep a hold on an alt, psychoanalyzing myself because some alts I dig my claws into and others I start out strong then just lose them entirely--

And I think it has to do with interaction. And I don’t necessarily mean ships or getting asks about them, I mean in a general ‘they have to feel like a part of a fuller world’. Despite not actually rping with Canum much I don’t feel the need to change him out with someone new, because he’s an established part of a bigger network of characters, even when I’m solo writing him he can interact with Ruhka or Lark or his own small set of npcs. Same of course goes for Lark or Al or Ruhka’s retainers, or the hrothgar lady I have plans for. The same can’t be said for Emyr, or Tristan, or really any other alt I make, and that’s the most damning difference.

Like that one post about writing I see every once in a while, ‘are you a descriptive writer or a dialog writer?’ I’m very much a dialog writer, I can’t write purple prose for shit, and I’m actually really self conscious about my writing because of it. But I feel more at home in writing characters interacting with each other, I actually really like rping multiple characters at a time.

I guess the easiest fix would be looping everyone into Ruhka’s sphere of influence, which is easier for characters on Mateus I think but it also sort of limits what sorts of characters that makes sense with. The other option would be getting that alt into an rp fc or other interaction heavy scene where they can make their own network of connections, which I think I prefer but I don’t know that I can promise myself to an fc that will expect time heavy obligations. If I can find a far more laid back one, perhaps.

There’s also the fact that I really just prefer rping certain personalities and character archetypes, though I can write a far broader spectrum than that. And ships specifically I just want to see the other character in some way with regularity, if the other writer doesn’t like their own character enough to post or write about them once in a while I can’t imagine the ship being written is any important to them either. I know not everyone writes or interacts with their characters the same way, and what I perceive isn’t necessarily the truth, but it’s healthier to try and find people that are closer to the same wavelength as you rather than stretch and stress yourself out to reach another. You can admire a writer and still not be compatible collaborators and that’s fine.

I feel like as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten pickier, or maybe I’m just learning to stick up for myself a little. Sometimes characters mesh but people don’t. Sometimes people mesh but characters or writing styles don’t. Sometimes walking away is the better course than starting a fight. Sometimes you have to defend yourself. I don’t know. I don’t really know where I was going with this either to be honest. I guess just to convince myself it’s okay to step back and figure out what I want out of the characters I have available to me.

Between Mateus and Balmung I have 5-6 toons that could be fantasia’d into something else, or otherwise tweaked to be something easier for me to rp, some have never been characters to begin with I’ve just been collecting event items on them and the like, keeping them in auxiliary basically. So I may poke and prod at a few ideas, as I’ve been doing lately anyways. I feel like one may just be Ruhka 2.0, a version of him with a little softer backstory and less money lmao. I’ve had a mind to make a more open engineer, and possibly a treasure hunter, but Ruhka does need a healer/magic user on hand so I may try that too. I suppose we’ll see.