#i still struggle with all four of their speech patterns

[twicethetrouble]

I'm, by no means, an expert, but i love writing dialogue and have been working on figuring out the turtle's (particularly Donnie's) speech patterns for some time. So here's some of the little tricks i found/use for our favorite Purple Turtle : )

Dramatic

a little awkward at times

likes big/fancy words (he's smart. He wants to make sure everyone to remember he's the smart one. Though it could just be he's needs to make sure the word is perfect for the use he needs it. That too)

rather say the action than do it (sighs, gasps, etc. usually with tonal indicators. like "surprised gasp!")

doesn't always use contractions (especially when he's being dramatic.)

will add verbal tonal tags, if he thinks it's needed. (like "I am amazed. I say sarcastically.")

I usually tweak a lot of it in editing. Trade out the sighs/gasps for the said word, add verbal tonal tags, and fancy his speech a bit. (it doesn't need a lot of fancying in my opinion. You don't have to go looking for new words for Donnie to say. Just things like instead of "I'm sorry" He might say "Apologies".)

Also, let him rant. He loves talking about stuff that he enjoys. There a oneshot of mine where he spends half the time just infodumping about pokemon with Mikey occasionally asking questions. It's one of my favorite Donnie moments i've written to date lol.

If that doesn't help, i'd suggest watching a few episodes with the intent to study Donnie's dialogue. That has always helped me whenever i felt like i was loosing my grip on a character's voice.

anyways, i hope that helps a bit!

a lil help

i see a lot of my mutuals writing donnie and i sometimes struggle with writing his dialog. Are there any tips any donnie writers can give to help me write him better. [please no angst realted stuff/gen]

[whateveriwant]

Hello, i hope you dont mind if i request agian! Could I get TF141 with an S/O who are just super prone to panic attack?

These are not meant to be taken as mental health advice. I'm just playing around here <3

Soap

The first time it happened, he didn't know what was going on. The sudden heavy breathing, the tremors, the loss of speech; he thought you were dying, honestly

It nearly sent him into a panic as he tried to figure out what he could do to help. Should you stay put or should you be taken to hospital? He just didn't know

However, once it had passed and you were able to better explain the situation, Soap was pulling you into a hug, the biggest breath of relief escaping him knowing you were going to be alright

He wasn't “happy” per se to learn this is something you struggle with regularly, but knowing there's at least something he could do to help in the future put his mind at ease

Nowadays he's got the drill down pat, so when he sees the signs an attack is incoming, he's whisking you to a safe environment where you can attempt to de-stress

Oftentimes it leads to him sitting beside you out on a curb somewhere, his warm hand rubbing soft circles into your back as he comforts you through it

Gaz

From the second he notices you start to pull away from him, Gaz is immediately on top of it, deploying a technique he's quite familiar with

“Tell me five things you can see,” he says, unbothered by having to repeat himself when you don't respond because he did not seriously just ask you that right now

But after enough prompting by him, you shakily list out five items, wet eyes darting around the room as you try to take stock of your surroundings

Once you do as bid, he'll continue, “Now four things you can hear.” And now you're starting to think you see where he's going with this

He'll work his way through all five senses, counting down to one, and once he reaches the final, you find that your pulse has slowed tremendously and your tremor has stopped entirely

Afterwards, you give him a shy thanks, asking how he knew that would work. “Simple,” he tells you. “Used to do it with my sister when we were young. It helped her then, so I thought it might help you now.”

Price

He takes the most heavy handed approach when trying to bring you down from such a rocky high. And while some people might find it smothering, you just see it as grounding

“Hey. Look at me,” his order is firm though his voice remains purposefully gentle. “Don't look anywhere else, just look at me. That's it. Just focus on me.”

If he has to, he'll even push a finger against your chin until you're meeting his eye and holding it, trying to focus on his soothing words instead of the anxious thoughts racing through your head

Slowly and deliberately, he'll breathe in through his nose then out through his mouth, guiding you to follow along with his measured pattern

If that's still not enough, he'll then take your hand beneath his and hold it over his heart, letting its strong, steady rhythm lull you back to a calmer state

“You alright?” he questions once you've settled down again. When you nod and assure him you are, he'll kiss your temple, promising, “I've got you, dear. Always.”

Ghost

When he realized what was happening with you, he quickly jumped into action, but in a way that was completely unexpected

“Remember when you first took me out for sushi and I didn't know wasabi was hot?” he asks you seemingly out of the blue. “Ate a whole spoonful before I realized. Burned like hell going down. But that was nothin’ compared to when it came out again later.”

The memory of that night stirs to life in your mind, and through your rapid breaths and trembling lips, you're able to crack the barest of smiles

He continues, “Or remember when I got sprayed by that skunk in the garden? You made me sleep on the couch for three days. Said I smelled like a garbage bin’s arsehole.”

That memory has you huffing out a short, low chuckle, and though you don't notice it, your pulse begins to hammer a little slower

And so he keeps going, distracting you with funny memories and personal anecdotes until all you're doing is smiling and laughing brightly, totally forgetting what had made you panic in the first place

[shameless-slit]

Obsessed with Nightmare being so much stronger than Dream in most portrayals, because it’s such a good metaphor for how negativity is much easier to fall into than positivity??

Like, one reason why the Nightmare + Killer VS Cross + Dream fight in Underverse 0.6 is one of my favorites is because it somehow becomes such a cool portrayal of mental health struggle. Cross succumbing to Night because of that deal he can’t get out of becomes an allegory for how negative thought patterns become inescapable loops. How easy, but ultimately harmful, it is to fall to negativity, especially when faced with intense trauma like Cross. And yes, it’s important to acknowledge and accept that negativity to be able to move forward, but that’s exactly what Night prevents cross to do.

And then the Faithfully scene, the conversation between Dream and Cross, shows us how hard it is to reclaim any positivity in that situation. And as much as it’s interesting to talk about toxic positivity through Dream’s character, I think this scene is an incredible character moment for him, to actually show how resilient and strong you have to be to still muster positivity, and inspire it in others in their darkest hours. It’s also a great example of not having to fight your battles alone, of managing to comfort someone without dismissing their struggles, etc… Like damn, I watched it when I was in a bad place mentally and Dream’s words genuinely helped me, I listened to the speech so many times I know it by heart now.

It’s a wonderful moment for both Cross and Dream, and also fits within the themes and allegory of the episode… And you’re telling me we got all that from four version of the same guy anime fighting each other???

[arpmemething2]

Star Trek: The Next Generation Sentence Starters

Send one to see how my muse reacts.  Feel free to change pronouns as needed.

"He must have died in his sleep."

"I would be delighted to offer any advice I can on understanding women. When I have some, I'll let you know."

"Father said she went to a beautiful place where everything is peaceful and everyone loves each other and no one ever gets sick. Do you think there's really a place like that?"

"I said shut up! As in close your mouth and stop talking."

"When I stroke the beard thusly; do I not appear more intellectual?"

“I could be chasing an untamed ornithoid without cause.”

"I wonder if the Emperor Honorious watching the Visigoths coming over the Seventh Hill truly realised that the Roman Empire was about to fall?"

"So then I said, 'In that frame of reference the perihelion of Mercury would have preceded in the opposite direction.'"

"How old do you think I am, anyway? "

"A blind man teaching an android how to paint? That's gotta be worth a couple of pages in somebody's book."

"What a terrible way to die."

"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. "

"It's the struggle itself that is most important.  We must strive to be more than we are."

"You are a little boy, six years old. You cannot hurt me."

"There's theory and there's application.  They don't always jibe."

"There are times when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders."

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."

"Sir, I protest, I am NOT a merry man!"

“The arbiter of a demanding wargame rendered the word "mismatch" as "challenge" in his language.”

"He treated me no differently from anyone else. He accepted me for what I am. And that, I have learned, is friendship."

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all, we're only mortal."

"You share all of those qualities in abundance. Perhaps you should try to build on your similarities."

"I tend bar and I listen."

"For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you... not mapping stars and studying nebula... but charting the unknown possibilities of existence."

"If you were any other man I would kill you where you stand!"

"There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions."

"Sharing an orbit with God is no small experience."

"Make it so."

"You see things with the eyes of a child, and that makes you more human than any of us."

“Life's true gift is the capacity to enjoy enjoyment.”

"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you. "

"Vamoose, ye little varmint!"

"You are free to execute your laws and your citizens as you see fit."

"We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. And then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again."

"Resistance is futile"

"What you are saying... is that you are lonely?"

"There are four lights!"

"This is mutiny!"

"There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of... there were loose threads... untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads... it had unraveled the tapestry of my life."

"I should have done this a long time ago."

"I've seen you think your way out of worse problems than this."

"It's just that our mental pathways have become accustomed to your sensory input patterns."

"What you have done will have serious ramifications. I am truly dismayed that you told no-one of what you were doing."

“I have to set an example, now more than ever. Facing death is the ultimate test of character.”

"In order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand them."

"Swimming is too much like bathing."

"Let me get this straight--you want me to take off your head?"

"Remember, put your shoes away."

"You jewel. That's exactly what I hoped."

"So, five-card stud, nothing wild... and the sky's the limit."

"Space... The final frontier."

"If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"

"Oh, I know Hamlet. And what he might say with irony, I say with conviction: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!" "

"Villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged."

"He wants the impossible."

"Flair is what makes the difference between artistry and mere competence."

"What is it about these squirming little infants that you find so appealing?"

"Those deaths must be avenged."

"He'd listen to everyone's opinion and then make his own decision."

"Do you think you're the only one in pain? That you have a monopoly on loss?"

"I don't have all the answers, I've never been dead before."

"I have never subscribed to the theory that political power flows from the barrel of a gun."

"Wishing for a thing doesn't make it so."

"There'll be others-but every time you feel love, it'll be different. Every time it's different."

“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied - chains us all irrevocably.”

"You must not kneel to me.  I do not deserve it."

"I do not fire on defenseless people."

"Things are only impossible until they're not"

"You have never seen death. Then look, and always remember."

"Good tea. Nice house."

"If the cause is just and honorable, they are prepared to give their lives."

"There are still many human emotions I do not fully comprehend: angry, revenge, jealousy. But I am not mystified by the desire to be loved, or the need for friendship. These are things I do understand."

"It is definitely like alcohol intoxication. The same lack of good judgment. For example, right now I find you extremely, extremely... of course we haven't time for that sort of thing."

"You have to measure your successes and your failures within, not by anything I or anyone else might think."

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

"You cannot justify a wantonly immoral act by citing the greater good!"

"This is down. Down is good. This is up. Up is no"

[aspoonofsugar]

A Quick Nora Thought...

Nora's first appearance in the series sets up her arc in two ways:

Nora: I can't believe we've been at Beacon for a full twenty-four hours! Not that I thought we'd get kicked out or anything, I mean, you're the perfect student and I'm… well, I'm me! But it's just crazy, you know? We've been friends for soooooooo long! What are the odds we'd still be together? Well, not "together-together…" Not that I'm not saying that you're not handsome; you are handsome, but that'd just be weird, right?

Let's focus on 2 lines:

Not "together-togheter"...

I'm... well, I'm me!

Not together-together

Nora is initially co-dependent from Ren. She is saved by him and spends the majority of her life by his side. As a result, she struggles to find a new balance, when her feelings become romantic. They are together platonically, but not romantically. At the same time, Nora's idea of getting together-together as things are is unhealthy.

I'm... well, I'm me!

Let's consider these 2 scenes:

We've got a world-renowned fighter on our team, what's basically a ninja, I can bench five of me… Jaune… We've trained all year, our weapons are awesome, Glynda barely yells at us anymore and�� Uhh… Jaune!

Nora: Yeah, they’ll be fine. Jaune’s a great leader, Oscar’s grown a ton, and Yang is more than capable of protecting them all in a fight. Oh, and of course Ren is- um…

Whenever Nora can't properly say who someone is, she would define them by their name. In volume 3, Jaune is still unsure of his identity, so he is no-one, but Jaune. In volume 8, Ren is going through a similar identity crisis, so Ren is someone Nora doesn't know anymore. This speech pattern highlights that the character mentioned has a frail sense of self. Well, what does it say about Nora, then? The very first thing she says is that she is unsure of who she is. Ren is someone, for example a handsome perfect student. But Nora? Who is she?

Ren + Nora = Renora

Nora's arc is built around 2 ideas, which seem opposites. On the one hand her story focuses on her relationship with Ren, as he is her objective since early on. On the other hand she must figure out who she is as an individual. So, how can she be together-together with Ren and be just Nora at the same time?

Nora: I don’t know what he is. Every time I think the two of us are making progress, he… (sighs) We’ve been together our whole lives but I feel like I understand him less now than ever. And I don’t know if that’s his fault or mine. Blake: When you’ve been at someone’s side for so long, after a while they become a part of you. But that’s just it, they’re only a part of you. Don’t forget about the rest. Nora: I don’t actually know who I am… without Ren. Pretty sad, huh? Weiss: Well, maybe take this opportunity to find out? Do something only Nora can do.

The two thematic threads come together in volume 8. Nora doesn't know who Ren is and since she has built her self-image around him, she is suddenly unsure of herself as well. It turns out that to go from Ren + Nora to Renora, our girl needs to figure herself out:

Nora: When my mom ran from the Grimm and left me behind, you found me. We became Ren and Nora. But I realized on this mission apart, I don’t know who “Just Nora” is. And if I’m ever going to find out, then I have to do it alone. Because I’ve always loved you, Lie Ren, and that pretty head on your shoulders seems like it’s doing a lot better. But I still got to get mine sorted out before I can be the partner you need. Is that…okay?

Only in this way, she can be by Ren's side (together), but not in aa codependent way (together-together).

As for who Nora is... the episode Risk makes it pretty clear.

The most beautiful flower of all

What beautiful blossoms we have this year, but look... This one's late...But I'll bet that when it blooms it will be the most beautiful of all. (Mulan, 1998)

The Renora's confession scene ends with Nora being not ready for a relationship with Ren. And yet, the moment looks at Nora he sees the air full of petals ready to bloom. Considering Ren's Mulan's allusion and the importance flowers have in Renora's arcs, I think the reference is pretty clear.

Nora (a pink flower) has yet to bloom. She is late in a sense. However, the flower which blooms late is the most beautiful of all. That is Nora. Our girl will definately bloom into herself, no matter the adversity she meets:

The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all (Mulan, 1998)

[angelfevr]

❤️️❤️️❤️️ :3

i have multiple wips so i'll talk abt All of them

this may get long, so.

icdwd - aka i couldn't dance with death if i tried!! its a zero escape fic mostly exploring a potential (loveless) relationship between akane and mira. its abt a lot of things i realize i never rlly touched upon in my other works?? for context im aromantic and i like. Constantly talk abt it even to my allo friends esp abt the constant amatonormativity the world likes to throw at us. specfically how ppl feel pressured to be in a relationship. why? well, various reasons: to fit in, to be seen as "more mature" (aspecs tend to experience infantilization and this doubles if ur autistic), to be seen as human, bc u feel like itll make u whole, bc u dont realize theres another option!! ive always hced my favs as aro ever since i realized it, but i always used to focus on the ace part of my identity. so i never rlly got to write a fic that explores aromanticism, aside from a fic i wrote four years ago in which leorio and kurapika hxh r in a qpr

another thing is i have ocd and for that reason, i dont like to write abt sexual topics . but in this fic, ive been sorta delving into that (its literally nothing just a fade to black that immediately goes to like the character waking up in another character's bedroom) and idk i think it shows my growth in a way?? that im willing to finally write that stuff without my ocd trying to kill me??? idk its . smth

im also having a Lot of fun writing akane and miras dynamic. i think, with me hcing them as aro (akanes aroace and miras an aro lesbian), i feel itd stand out more compared to other mirakane fanworks and interpretations . like this isnt a relationship ur supposed to root for!!! its abusive, its messy, its Uncomfortable, gory, and both women have ulterior motives. idk i like writing abt two unabashedly flawed queer women and having them navigate a relationship when one has no experience while the other has experience but whose disability prevents them from connecting w others (akane has a similar struggle), idk!! its an interesting dynamic

queerpei - i like a lot of the descriptions i wrote. im so used to writing akane that its soooo weird writing in the headspace of anyone else. but junpeis introspection is fun, like he has a mind of his own... i have this experience when writing akane (im plural so. go figure) and even when writing diana

angelus custos - so im kinda in the planning stage for this one but . Wow. im so proud of myself and how far ive come with this project, and just in general?? i used to primarily be a fic writer until 2018, when i decided to dabble in making my own characters. its always been bittersweet, bc my friends (all artists, never writers) would tell me to just make ocs instead of fanfic and my 12-14 yr old self would always be upset by that. so my characters never rlly came into their own so to speak

until This Year. ive been watching this rlly awesome youtuber named local script man. he's a screenwriter but a lot of his advice can apply to writing as well. i dont remember which video it was, but he talked abt how a characters' motivations can serve as fuel for smth deeper, like an insecurity for example. which THEN can serve as a backstory. and idky but it all clicked in my head?? character work became so much easier when i applied this to my process. i no longer had trouble w coming up w things that seemed to come naturally to most. bc i Know im good at fleshing out characters, i just needed to know how to do it for original work, even tho ive had friends praise my characters in the past

but yeah thats prob the best part of the story rn . im still having trouble w what their voices would sound like, speech patterns and the like, but thatd prob come around when i actually write the damn thing lol

BtSoyT - the idea itself has me so excited!!! ive been watching some horror movies, specifically recs from my friend @zebatverse hehe, and idk i feel like ive been getting more inspo and knowing what i'd wanna do if i were to write horror . i have several other ideas besides this in my notebook but this is one i wanna write the most. i even made a moodboard for it ^_^

[eternallytired17]

20 Questions for Writers:

Thank you @johnslittlespoon for the tag! This was very fun!

This is open to anyone else who wants to try!

How many works do you have on ao3?

I currently have four works on ao3, all from different fandoms.

What’s your total ao3 word count?

177,218 words so far!

What fandoms do you write for?

I am currently writing for Masters of the Air, and X-Men (Alternate Timeline).

Top 5 fics by kudos?

On Ao3:

Into the Cage (Prodigal Son) - 501 kudos

Remembrance (X-Men: Alternate Timeline) - 145 kudos

Amongst the Vines (Masters of the Air/Bridgerton) - 115 kudos

No Other Love (House of the Dragon) - 114 kudos

On Fanfiction.net:

Remembrance (X-Men: Alternate Timeline) - 175,235 views, 399 favourites, 461 followers

Do you respond to comments?

Yes, I try my best to respond to all comments since I started posting again this year.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

It’s not finished, (I don’t know if it ever will) but I think that my planned ending for ‘Into the Cage’ would be pretty angsty, because they would rescue Malcolm, but have to shoot Martin in order to do so. I haven’t quite decided if I would kill off Martin, I feel like it would piss off a lot of readers, but it seems likely ‘cause I don’t have the same affection for him as others do.

What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

‘Amongst the Vines’ is probably the happiest, because they both got to fuck and are basically walking off into the sunset to go happily fuck some more.

Do you get hate on fics?

I thankfully haven’t received any hate on a fic. I’ve gotten some weird criticism before, where someone was unhappy with a brief time jump, which I didn’t agree with, so I just didn’t do anything about it.

Do you write smut?

I have recently started to write smut, and it has been an interesting learning curve. I consider myself to be somewhere on the asexual/aromantic spectrum, though I still think sex/romance/kink is nice in theory. I enjoy reading smut and gladly partake in the brainrot, so I thought I would try my hand at writing it. It’s been enormous fun so far, it makes people very happy and I’m learning a lot!

Craziest crossover?

I suppose the Masters of the Air and Bridgerton is the craziest I’ve written, 'cause it's the only crossover I've done. I’ve struggled with the fact that it’s originally American characters in a British setting and in a completely different time period, so in portraying our MOTA boys in the Bridgerton universe, I may be losing some of their characteristic speech patterns and slang, but I’ll have to make peace with that.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? 

Not to my knowledge.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

A reader translated ‘No Other Love’ into Spanish with my permission, and it was posted to Wattpad. I okayed a request a long time ago for ‘Remembrance’ to be translated into German, but I’ve never heard about what came of it.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope!

All time favourite ship?

Oh, that’s hard. It’s like choosing a favourite child. I’ve loved Cherik, Charles Xavier/Erik Lensherr, for over ten years, so I suppose that’s gotta win for being a constant and standing the test of time. I’ll let you know in ten years about Clegan. 

What’s a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I would love to finish my House of the Dragon wip, cause I’ve done so much work on it already, but it’s such a massive undertaking that I don’t think I would ever post any of the completed parts of it if there was no hope of finishing it.

I’m going to finish ‘Remembrance’ even if it’s the last goddamned thing I do. It's my baby.

What are your writing strengths?

Uh, idk. Not to toot my own horn, but I have used a thesaurus website religiously for over a decade, so I think I have a pretty good vocabulary while writing. Though recently I’ve discovered I’ve been using one or two words wrong for years (I thought 'minutely' meant 'slightly'). I’ve been told I create good ambience and/or ‘setting feel’ -I cannot for the life of me remember the exact word for what I’m trying to say, but ya feel me? I also feel like I’m pretty decent at dialogue, but finding the beats in a conversation can be difficult.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I have such a tough time with writing big action scenes without dialogue to divvy it up. I find it a bit boring to write without it. I feel like I write rather clinically, so I aspire to write more eloquently, of almost a poetic nature that touches upon the inner emotions of the characters by showing without telling. Ooof, ‘showing not telling’ is a tough one for me to attain.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I don’t mind it, but I don’t personally do it anymore. For those who do, I prefer if they have the English translation in italics next to where it was said in the text, rather than at the notes at the bottom, so that it keeps me in the rhythm of the story.

First fandom you wrote in?

X-Men (Alternate Timeline) was the first fandom I wrote in. I started planning/writing ‘Remembrance’ during the summer of 2015. I truly think that writing is what ultimately saved me, cause I was dealing with some very dark times mentally in my early teens, and my life changed dramatically for the better when I started ‘Remembrance’. It gave me something to be excited about, helped me through some traumatic life events that I shouldn't have had to deal with, and connected me an amazing community on fanfiction.net who I got to hear from regularly with each chapter release.

Favorite fic you’ve written?

I mean, ‘Remembrance’ is the OG and has so many years of work devoted to it. There are so many parts of myself embedded in it and has taught me so much about my own Dutch heritage. Laurien feels like an imaginary friend who's grown up and evolved with me instead of just a character on a page.

My second choice is ‘Amongst the Vines’ cause it was so much fun to write, it got me in touch with the lovely people of the MOTA writer community on Tumblr, and it combines together two of my current obsessions; Masters of the Air and Bridgerton.

[gryphonanon]

Oh, hello there, I'm Gryphon Anon, but you can also call me Grif, it’s nice to meet you. Did you need me for anything? Or are you just here to chat? Both are fine with me!

[Boundaries and other Character Info below cut!]

Boundaries and Other Things:

-Anyone coming into my askbox/messages with racism, LGBTQA+phobia, ableism, and any other hate speech will be blocked and reported. I have zero tolerance for such things. Obviously, RPing this stuff is different, but I would like to be warned via DM/ask before the RP ask with hate speech is sent.

-Any suggestive asks will be deleted, unless they are from people who have my permission to send such asks. I get very uncomfortable when people I don't know well send me that sort of stuff, especially since I do not know how old they are.

-I'm kinda slow with replies, so please be patient with me. I can also be a bit forgetful sometimes, especially if I’ve got a lot going on. So, if I haven’t responded to something after about a day, feel free to send a gentle reminder via my askbox or messages.

-If you want me to respond to something, please use @gryphonanon, so I can easily find it. You don’t have to tag me when answering asks I have sent, I tag myself in most messages I send!

-For those of you using anon to talk to me, please say who you are in your asks, so I know who I am talking to. I can be fairly oblivious to things like writing patterns, and so I probably won’t know who you are unless you outright tell me.

-If I do anything wrong, or I’ve upset you in any way, please let me know. I'm still getting used to how RPing on Tumblr works and I struggle with social things, so sometimes I make mistakes, but I always strive to learn from my mistakes and get better!

-I'm not used to using trigger/content warnings, though I do try and tag some things. If you need me to tag a specific trigger, please let me know, and I'll be particularly careful to tag it.

-And most importantly, everyone have fun, be kind to yourselves, take breaks if you need them, and keep being awesome! <3

Grif Info:

-Grif is a 28 year old trans man human that was trapped in the Digital Circus and now has the form of a plush gryphon. (His birthday is May 25th, he entered the circus at 27 years old)

-Grif uses he/him pronouns, though he's fine with any non-female pronouns.

-When standing on all fours, he's 3'5ft to the top of his head. When he rears up on his hind legs, he's 5ft.

-Grif is Welsh. Voice Claim post is here!

-Grif’s basic character info can be found here. It is not necessary to know this stuff when interacting with him, but it's there if you wanted to know more about him. This is very outdated now. I'll get around to writing up a better bio for him at some point.

-You can read through all the RP posts in chronological order using this link! Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the Tumblr app, but it does work on mobile browsers!

-And this link has everything that's happened to Grif summarized!

Tags:

#The Gryphon Talks - for IC things

#The Mod Talks - for OOC. I also use [square brackets] and/or label as -GryphonMod for OOC stuff.

#My Art - for art I have made

#Not My Art - for art other people have made of Grif

#Lore - for lore drops, mostly pre-Circus stuff

Extra Stuff:

Links to non-RP lore stuff:

An angsty piece done for Valentine's Day

Panic attack after the Clown killing Carbine incident

Angst and lore following the Clown-Carbine incident

Just a bit of writing after the initial Colorbine incident

A moment from before the Circus

Random Other Lore Stuff:

Grif's Romance Chart

Area Theme and Boss Theme

Grif's Lake House Floorplan Abandoned, but keeping the link here just in case.

Grif's Candleton Cottage Floorplan His current residence!

[moe-broey]

I HAVE. SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS. I am STRUGGLING. To find The Words. But you capture it all so brilliantly, Same Divine Visions.... just more aptly put. But I am thinking about this all of the time!!!!

I think about the stark contrast, between the way the Summoner speaks vs how any given Hero speaks. More often than not, you can tell who came from what background -- the royals carry themselves a certain way, those who have close connections to royalty (retainers, knights, ect) carry themselves a certain way, and you can spot someone from a common background pretty easily. But even then, Kiran stands out as an anomaly. Because they don't come from Fantasy Medieval Class System, they come from a modern world. Which still has a class system but WE GOTTA STAY ON TOPIC. MAIN POINT! Kiran is fucking weird because they come from a system that's completely alien to what any given Hero is familiar with, that Seems universal across any world the Order stumbles into or pulls Heroes from (nearly all of them set in the fantasy medieval world, with some exceptions!)

ANOTHER POINT. I am always thinking about. You captured it really well, saying it's almost like a dialect! And also, all the Heroes lacking the cultural context as to why Kiran talks like that, and ALSO. This is the biggest thing I wanted to talk about!!!! The differences, in speech patterns, and phrases/idioms that don't translate very well. Something you could say to anyone here, and most likely they'd recognize immediately what you're talking about and what you mean when you say it. Like saying, "I lost my train of thought", or "Some wires must have got crossed", or maybe you compare a physically unpleasant groggy feeling to feeling "jetlagged". What's a "train"? "Wires"? What do you even make of the word "jetlagged". HERE'S the thing... I don't think whoever Kiran is talking to, (Alfonse, as an example here?) would ask for clarification Every Single Time they say something like that. He might! But in the moment, he might choose to try and pick up on context clues, instead. What is the core of what my friend seems to be communicating to me, here? He can put it together, even if there's blank spots. Just like you could, if you heard a phrase or word, you've never heard before.

But in the event that Alfonse DOES ask, "What is a train?" I think it hits Kiran. Like a truck. Or perhaps a train. Very suddenly, Kiran is EXTREMELY reminded of the fact that they are so far from home. The profound sense of isolation that comes with that. Literally, worlds apart. THAT'S WHAT I'M ALWAYS THINKING OF.... the unique form of isolation, Kiran must feel. The only other characters who may know exactly what they mean are the Tokyo Mirage Session guys. And there's like four of them. One of them is a baby.

Now add some Weirdness in there. Add some referential humor. Add a dash of being chronically online. Add possibly having a wealth of knowledge about something so specific and niche that's completely and utterly inapplicable to anything in Askr. Add some Oddities that may be unique to That Specific Summoner themselves, shit that would get them flagged as a fucking weirdo even in their OWN world. This is just SUCH a funny concept to me... as anyone who Isn't The Summoner, you just have to play the guessing game of Is This Just A Cultural Gap Or At Least Common Knowledge In Your World, OR Is The Summoner Just A Fucking Weirdo. Because, in my Summoner's case anyway, it is. It very much is.

I am ALSO always thinking about the insane amount of power dropped into the Summoner's lap, how in the WORLD are they meant to use this ethically, ect ect ect. I have no notes/additions there, you've absolutely captured the core of what I'm always thinking! Can somebody like, get this guy a coffee or something. Maybe some tea or hot cocoa, if the jitters are gonna kill them. Badly.

What do u think Kiran is

How do u think the order sees kiran

*slowly sits up in my chair*

I think Kiran is a very normal person. This is someone you and I have met before. Be that from the other side of grocery store cashier, waiting in the same elevator, or walking by on a crosswalk. Kiran is a civilian from our world trying to roll with the punches of being warped somewhere completely alien. And you can see it in how they conduct themselves.

I always have a lot of fun writing Kiran’s dialogue because their casual modern speech almost feels like a dialect in comparison to the more formal fantasy tone everyone else speaks with. An “ain’t” will never exit Alfonse’s mouth, you know? And there’s a difference in “Do you have gold?” vs “You got gold?” To me, this gives Kiran an air of unfamiliarity to anyone they interact with. Let’s use Grima as an example, because it doesn’t sound like this grammatical change would make much of difference until Kiran has the audacity to hit Grima with a bro mid sentence. But that’s just how they talk. And as sweet and friendly as they are, there’s always moments like that to remind that no one has the cultural context to fully understand Kiran. Except for the audience, who can realize that Kiran let the customer service voice drop to talk to Grima like he’s an actual person.

And that’s just about how they talk! This view is only emphasized by every other thing about them! They’re a lovable goof, which is normal chill person behavior in the audience’s eyes but feels REALLY ODD to the characters of FE’s medieval fantasy war setting. There is this air of unknown about them that the more socially perceptive will pick up on and will try to come to a conclusion about. Example, I imagine Soren would interpret a lot of this as a dangerous and deeply annoying lack of intelligence from someone he has the displeasure of sharing a tactics table with. Or looping back to the Grima example, he would totally think Kiran has greedy ulterior motives behind that pleasant facade. It takes a lot of work for those types to realize that the discrepancy present isn’t really any of those things. But I also wouldn’t be too surprised if Kiran doesn’t try to directly prove any of those assumptions wrong unless they have to.

Why? Well now it’s time for the implications! Oh how we love the implications.

Because the Summoner is a different story. No one has any fucking clue what that is.

I can tell you what Kiran has pieced together so far. Summoning people from across time and space is apparently not easy. It’s not some school of magical study that some mage could pull off with enough time and research. Trust, Eitri tried. It’s a lot of complex moving parts. For example, the contracts. The contracts Kiran automatically binds their summoned to don’t even compare to the ones Veronica used in book 1. They are far more intense and infinitely harder to break. The only way out of them is if Kiran wills it so. Not even death is an option, because Kiran can come in for the revive. If they had to guess, it’s an older, more completed version of the art. Something lost to time. But no matter the case, Kiran has the ability to take full control of whoever they manage to summon. From a lowly farmer to the divine. And their power only grows.

In a similar vein, if there was any character to canonically see the hud, I think it would be Kiran. It’s genuinely part of their power set. I have previously described Kiran as the party mage until Veronica shows up to be the actual mage, but it would be way more accurate to call them a mystic/seer. They see the map, everyone’s stats, and is doing a fast amount of math to give the combat forecast. Then, upon processing all this information their enemies couldn’t dream of having at their disposal, Kiran can telepathically communicate any change in plans to anyone under contract. Kiran is not inherently some great tactician the moment they touch ground in Askr; they simply can do things no one else can. They’re learning the actual tactics part on the fly. This makes them simultaneously the largest ace up the Order’s sleeve and potentially its biggest liability. If they fall, it could cause a whole system cascade. By that same token, some of the biggest threats the Order has faced are the ones who do their research and rightfully target Kiran.

Now. Thinking critically about all that. That’s downright terrifying. A ridiculous amount of power has been dropped callously into Kiran’s lap and they have to work extremely hard to be moral with it. It’s terrifyingly easy not to be. It would actively take less effort to ‘take the reins’ as it were. But in order to be able to sleep at night ever again, they go the extra mile to not invalidate the will of their summoned. To take over like that. To make a colony of worker bees out of people. Because oh dear god they just summoned a child and the fact that they could easily force them to fight and die for them, only to be revived and do it all over again, is HAUNTING. No. No the Order has an in house orphanage now. This kid is getting adopted and cared for god damnit or Kiran might just pop a blood vessel. And sure that child is going to be a child and there will never be a world where they get along with everyone else, but that’s just going to need be a problem they address when they get there and not an excuse to use Hubris; the power set. Now replace the word child with everyone they ever summoned and you have the wider philosophy they apply to the entire Order.

They’re hyper aware of the power imbalance. They hate it with every bone in their body. They work really hard to correct it in whatever way they can.

So Kiran might not jump on the opportunity to correct those who think lesser of them. It’s… oddly comforting to know someone is keeping a critical eye on them. Holding them accountable. Especially since so much of the order just thinks of them as this quirky yet well meaning host. And, really, what can they even do about that? They have gone over the contract with every hero they summon and despite that they still choose to stay. So, what, do they try to inspire more mistrust? The problem with that they would have to actually do acts that intentionally inspire mistrust. And even if that was successful they can’t just waste the extra man power because every other month there’s some new divine asshole who wants them all dead. And if they fail that means they have to start their life from square one and god they can’t do that again so—

Just breathe Kiran.

It’s fine. You’re fine. Just breathe.

You have work to do.

[reesiereads]

Hello good sir. Would you offer me some crumbs of bread? (Aka ramble about any oc you want. Idc what or who it is. I'm giving you the change go write a whole essay if you want)

Thank you so much for this opportunity! Seeing as it's Sol's birthday today (yes ey are named after the Summer Solstice, it's an important day culturally in Aries) I'll take the chance to ramble about em.

Under a read more because this got hella long :))

So Sol is one of four protagonists for my original story Mutiny. Out of the four ey're probably the most interesting at first glance because ey aren't new to The Eye like the rest of the protagonists. Writing em is a lot of fun too since ey have a lot of secrets to keep from both the other main characters and the reader.

One of Mutiny's main themes is expectations and specifically how harmful they can be. Each character struggles with a different kind of expectation (each partially based on my own struggles, because every writer knows you've got to pull from your own experiences) and Sol's type is mostly familial expectations.

As the second child of the current King and Queen of Aries Sol doesn't have as many expectations as eir older brother but ey are still expected to contribute both to the family and eir country. The problem really lies in Sol's lackluster leadership and strategy skills, something critical in politics. Being headstrong and impulsive has led em to plenty of mistakes and earning a very critical eye from eir Mother who often reminds em how lucky everyone is ey are "just the spare."

Another thing that makes Sol different from the other characters of Mutiny is how ey actively seek out more responsibility. Ey strive to prove themself capable of leading in hopes of gaining eir families' approval. Everyone in eir family is important or talented on some level except em. This "black sheep" sort of feeling ey struggle with and general insecurities lead em to take on more than ey can chew and in general be extremely reckless.

Eir arc is essentially about learning ey have worth inherently rather than having to earn it and that they are good enough as ey are.

Something else about Sol that's particularly fun to write about is eir speaking patterns. Because of eir upbringing, Sol is used to having to hide when eir uncomfortable or stressed- so when ey feel these things it's obvious because ey sort of put on this... formal front. For instance:

Stressed: “Apologies,” Sol says, forcing eir fists to relax and eir expression to fall flat. Setting eir shoulders back and making sure eir posture is straight ey meet Kenny’s gaze dead-on, despite the crawling sensation that crawls up eir spine. “It’s… not ideal, but we knew that would happen eventually. We’ll just have to choose carefully.”

Not Stressed: Scowling, Sol rolls eir eyes. “It’s the last chance to find new recruits, you know that as well as I do, Kenny.”

(Keep in mind those snippets are from a first draft so if they're a bit of a mess that's why)

In general, eir speech is more formal than most of Mutiny's cast, since Aries is an extremely formal country (especially among the nobles/rich/royals). It's a fun challenge to try and write in a way that's still casual enough to not be overly strange while still expressing Sol's roots. When writing so many main characters and perspectives it's important all of them have a unique voice. Dion who spends most of his time in poorer areas and skips school a lot can't sound the same as Sol who's spent eir entire childhood being trained in etiquette and politics in a formal setting.

Another interesting thing about Sol that I only discovered while writing the first draft is that despite not being very close to eir actual siblings ey act a lot like an older sibling to the other protagonists (who are all younger than em). I think eir desire for more responsibility as well as their wish of getting closer to eir family/siblings probably plays a part in this. For examples:

Dion: Sol opens eir mouth again before closing it, as if unsure of what to say. Eventually, ey open eir mouth again, seeming more sure of emselves as ey say, “You know it gets easier, being here. Obviously everyone wants to leave but-” ey rub the back of their neck and look away. “All I’m saying is that it’s not so bad; it could be worse.”

Vega: Should I even be holding them like this? It feels like it’s making it worse. Ey didn’t let go for fear that once ey did Vega would somehow manage to hurt themself, but guilt sat heavy in eir chest the longer it went on. Why did I even try to help? Sure they were crying but… that was probably better than whatever this is. Vega was fighting like they thought they were dying; maybe they did.

“Vega,” Sol tried again, not bothering to keep their voice quiet now. If Dion and Sabrina hadn’t woken up already they probably weren’t going to. “Vega, it’s alright. Calm down.”

Sabrina: “I can talk to her if you want,” Sol offers. If ey were being honest ey planned on doing it either way. Sabrina’s input only determined whether Sol would be telling Coral about this conversation or not. It makes something ugly stir in Sol’s stomach, hearing about someone ey roughly consider a friend going through what Coral has put Sabrina through; convinced her of. Sol wouldn’t stand for it whether ey knew Sabrina personally or not but now eir heart has a stake in the issue as well and ey can’t help but be angry on Sabrina’s behalf. Someone has to be, considering she can’t even seem to recognize that she wasn’t the one in the wrong.

Sol, to me, is kinda the definition of a person who is always trying eir best to do the right thing but just isn't very sure of emself, particularly when it comes to more emotional issues. A lot of eir interactions are based on my own struggles emotionally and I've played with the idea of Sol being autistic with low empathy (because mood).

Anyways, Sol is a very special character to me who I've spent the last three years or so developing. It's hard to comprehend that when I first thought of Mutiny ey were just a background character and now ey're one of the main characters with major stakes in taking down The Eye.

Happy Birthday, Sol! And thanks again Anon for asking for this essay <33

[isabellestone]

Quirks To Show Your Character’s ADHD

From a certified ADHD adult(ish) human. 

Not being able to shrug a niggling feeling or through until it’s dealt with.

Saying ‘one more minute’ when hyper-focused, then looking up to find two hours have passed.

F i d d l i n g 

(With literally anything available) 

Sometimes having trouble falling or staying asleep because their damn brain won’t shut up. 

Yet still being a semi-coherent person the next day, despite only being out for four hours. 

Because  e n e r g y 

Eventually learning ways to get to sleep, but getting annoyed when they fail.

Struggling to wait their turn when speaking or in games.

Losing track of their point mid-speech.

Inability to control thoughts as they overlap and run away faster than they can be caught. 

Having too many hobbies.

Being more creative under stress.

Speaking really really fast when excited or after caffeine.

Struggling to remember instructions.

Struggling to listen to instructions.

Spotting patterns and details others often miss.

Forgetting brilliant ideas just as quickly as they were thought up.

And thus being really impulsive when we get ideas.

Desperate attempts at organisation (giving everything a place).

And yet still not remembering where they’ve put anything.

I m p a t i e n c e 

Disclaimer: Not everyone with ADHD will experience all of these things, and there are many more things that people with ADHD experience. If you experience these things, it doesn’t necessarily mean your ADHD, but these things are widely present in those who have it. If you want to write a character with ADHD please do your research and only take this as a starting point.

[If reposting to instagram please credit @isabellestonebooks]

[snandtnurtle]

All The Bad Kids Are Trans

and you can’t convince me otherwise

First off, Riz. Riz dresses like every transmasc in existence. No cis man walks around wearing a newspaper cap voluntarily. When he first started questioning his gender (which was about age 10 or so) he took about ten different online quizzes in order to compare the results, then decided they weren’t reputable sources and took matters into his own hands in order to scientifically prove his feelings. Finally Sklonda took him aside one day and said “You’re trans, right?” Riz responded with a long ramble about how he hadn’t quite collected all the data and there were still plenty of experiments left to do before asking how she knew. Sklonda replied “you scratched a bunch of different gendered terms into the wall and then rated them all one to five stars. You rated ‘boy’ very high. Do you want to use a different name? Or pronouns? Also, are we out of paper? You need to stop writing on my walls, we rent this apartment.” Penny had figured it out months ago and had been very subtly avoiding calling him anything but “kiddo.”

Adaine came out at thirteen years old, much to the chagrin of her parents. She tried to be assertive about coming out, but also had a panic attack midway through, which made them doubt her confidence. She had prepared a speech and had been using she/her pronouns and the name “Adaine” with her friends for a long time beforehand, just to figure out if she was totally, absolutely sure. Incidentally, she purposefully picked the name Adaine in order to subvert the -wyn pattern that all of the Abernants’ names have. It took her a lot of fighting to get her parents to address her correctly, but, though it didn’t occur to her at the time, Aelwyn never had any issues with it.

Gorgug is that kid who came out when he was like four years old. Wilma and Digby SHOWERED him with love and support from the get-go, and contacted Gorbag and Roz (who were also supportive) to help them think of a name that honored his orc heritage. However, the Thistlespring parents are SO supportive that they sometimes forget that their son is trans, which only heightens his discomfort during their weirdly frequent sex ed conversations. “Mom and dad? Mom and dad. I don’t have anything to ‘wrap up.’” Also, he wears hoodies everywhere. Case closed.

Fig came out at the end of 8th grade, which was..... a tumultuous time. Sandra-Lynn and Gilear are both supportive of their daughter, but because she decided to come out just when her horns were coming in, and they were figuring out the divorce, and Gilear was still trying to process that his daughter wasn’t exactly his daughter, they struggled a bit with the news at first, which only sent Fig further down her identity-crisis-rebellious-phase rabbithole. Gorthalax had been keeping tabs on Fig and knew as soon as she came out. He’s very proud of his daughter, because he may be a demon but he sure as hell (haha) ain’t a transphobe! Everyone assumed she was just a very flamboyant gay boy in middle school. Now she’s a riot grrrl.

Fabian came out when he was still on the pirate ship with his father, and his parents were OVERWHELMINGLY supportive from the get-go. He, of course, left figuring out his name up to his parents again, because who could think of a better name for him than Bill Seacaster? Captain Seacaster, incidentally, sent a panicked letter to Garthy as soon as Fabian came out asking wtf he was supposed to do, to which Garthy responded “just call him your son and use the right pronouns, i suppose, darling.” He took this to heart, and would enthusiastically (some might say overenthusiastically, but not Fabian! Not about his papa!) exclaim that Fabian was his “darling BOY!” whenever he saw him. Of course, they’re far more settled into the reality of things by now, but saying “my darling boy” just became a bit of a habit.

FH:SY finale spoilers below the cut!

Kristen is the only one who did not come out before the events of Fantasy High. In fact, she has yet to come out in canon at all, but I am convinced it is coming. She’s finished her sexuality crisis. She’s in a stable relationship.  ....Except that Tracker has just left for a long trip. Perfect time to have another crisis while your emotional rock is away! I am convinced that Kristen, a religiously traumatized follower of a nonbinary god of mystery and the unknown, cannot NOT be nonbinary and will absolutely have an arc where she comes to terms with her gender and learns to operate and find confidence in herself without Tracker. I’m not sure what pronouns she’ll use, but it’s probably all of them.

[dialovers-translations]

Diabolik Lovers LUNATIC PARADE ;; Kanato Route ー Sub Scenario w/Subaru

–> In between the main route chapters, the player is taken to the area map of the Parade where you can freely roam around. There are four different places to visit, each with different mini games and sub scenarios to enjoy.

AREA: GLIMMER MAIN STREET

CHARACTER: SUBARU

ー The scene starts on Glimmer Main Street

Yui: ( I shouldn’t complain about this free candy we were handed along the road but... )

( There’s a skull drawn on the package, so to be honest, I’m not exactly thrilled about putting this in my mouth... )

Kanato: Say, Yui-san. Could I have that candy?

Yui: Eh? Yeah. Of course.

But are you sure? It doesn’t seem very delicious...

Kanato: Yes. I’m not going to eat it after all. I will use it for my entertainment. 

Yui: Entertainment...? What do you mean?

Kanato: Just watch and you’ll find out.

Ah, Subaru arrived just on cue. I suppose I will call him over.

Yui: Eh...? But why Subaru-kun?

Kanato: His lack of respect towards me has always bothered me, you see. 

This candy will fix that. Fufu, just watch, okay? 

Yui: ( It’ll fix Subaru-kun’s lack of respect...? I wonder what he means by that...? )

ー Kanato walks up to Subaru

Kanato: Hey, Subaru. I’ll give you this candy.

Subaru: ...Haah!? Why, all of a sudden...?

Kanato: It’s a gift from me. Come on, eat it right now.

Subaru: Not interested.

Kanato: That was an order. Hurry!

Subaru: Didn’t you hear me when I said I don’t want it!?

Yui: K-Kanato-kun. It doesn’t seem like Subaru-kun is interested, so you probably shouldn’t push too much...

Kanato: Shut up. Could you keep quiet, please?

Yui: B-But...

Kanato: ...Hey, Subaru. You are my younger brother, aren’t you?

Subaru: So what?

Kanato: You should show respect for your older brothers. Isn’t that common sense?

If you won’t listen to me, I will get rid of that coffin in the living room, understood? 

Subaru: Haah!?

Yui: Y-You can’t do that...! 

That coffin means a lot to Subaru-kun, so for you to throw it out...

Kanato: But it’s in the way, don’t you think? 

Besides, I am giving him a choice. I won’t throw it out as long as he eats this candy. 

Subaru: Uu...

Kanato: ...You wouldn’t want that, right? You need that coffin, don’t you? In that case...

Subaru: ...Fine. I just gotta eat this shit, right!?

Kanato: Fufu, I’m so happy my younger brother knows what’s best for him. Here you go.

*Rustle*

Subaru: ...Nn...

Nn...Well, it does not taste bad...I reckon. (1)

Yui: Eh!? 

( His way of talking... )

Subaru: ー Excuse me...!? Would you please explain this situation to me!?

...Wait! Again...!?

Kanato: Fufu...

You fell for it...Fufu...Haah, hilarious...

Those who put that candy inside their mouth will end up using formal speech.

It’s a very popular candy here in the Demon World nowadays...but I suppose you had never heard of it.

Subaru: How was I supposed to know exactly!? Or rather, you made me eat that shiーー ...candy on purpose, didn’t you!? 

Yui: ( It sounds like he’s trying to talk like normal, but struggles to do so... )

Kanato: Fufu, this is even funnier than I expected. Who would have thought you’d sound so awkward while using honorific speech...

Subaru: Please stop joking around...! I want to be able to speak normal again as soon as possible!

*THUD*

Yui: S-Subaru-kun, calm down...!

( He’s still the same even when speaking politely like that...! )

Kanato: ...Then just take it out of your mouth.

Subaru: ...I beg your pardon? 

Kanato: I’m asking why you’ve kept the candy in your mouth like some gullible fool? 

You’ll be back to your usual self once you take it out, right?

Yui: Ah...He does have a point.

( I’m sure Subaru-kun should have caught on to that as well, so why...? )

Subaru: I simply cannot help it! Its taste is rather enjoyable, wasting it would be a darn (2)...shame!

Yui: Eh? That’s your reasoning...?

Kanato: ...You really are a fool.

ーー THE END ーー

Translation notes

(1) This is difficult to tell for anyone who doesn’t speak Japanese, but Subaru’s speech pattern suddenly changes here. He adds ですね or ‘desu ne’ at the end of his sentence, which is used in standard, polite Japanese. (E.g. The Japanese Kanato uses.) If this was the usual Subaru talking, he would say something like ‘だな’ or ‘da na’ instead.

(2) Subaru does slip up every once in a while even while having the candy in his mouth. For example, he says もったいねえ or ‘mottainee’ here instead of the proper もったいない or mottainai’, but then follows it up with a ですよ or ‘desu yo’ to make it this weird mix of informal and formal speech. 

[eastasiansonwesternscreen]

Why did Miyoshi Umeki, the only Asian actress to ever win an Oscar, destroy her trophy?

(By Shirley Li)

Growing up on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, Miyoshi Umeki was obsessed with American pop music and dreamed of making it to the United States after World War II. She practiced singing with a bucket over her head to avoid annoying her parents, taped piano-key patterns to the dining-room table to rehearse, and sang with a GI band for 90 cents a night in her teens.

It worked. She moved to New York in 1955, and within a few years, she had made her American dreams come true. In 1957, she starred opposite Marlon Brando and Red Buttons in Sayonara, playing Katsumi, the submissive, doomed wife of Buttons’ American airman. Her heartbreaking performance won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first Asian actor of either gender to win, and still the only Asian actress to earn an Academy Award. She accepted her Oscar in a kimono, and her speech was gentle and tentative. “I wish somebody would help me right now,” she said, seeming to struggle with the language barrier. She then thanked “all American people” and bowed to the audience.

It was not, in other words, the kind of speech we would expect today from someone who has just crashed through Hollywood’s glass ceiling, and in ways large and small, Umeki’s career would be shaped by that passive, reverent image of her. The few parts available to Asian actresses in the years after World War II often were stereotypes — Japanese women, in particular, were seen as coy and doll-like — and Umeki learned to lean into that cliché to keep getting jobs.

After her Oscar win, Umeki starred in the Broadway musical Flower Drum Song, for which she nabbed a Tony nomination in 1959. (She later scored a Golden Globe nod in 1962 for the film adaptation.) She portrayed a shy, lovelorn Chinese immigrant promised to a nightclub owner in San Francisco’s Chinatown. And for Gen-Xers, she remains best known for her supporting role on the sitcom The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, where she played the kind, demure housekeeper Mrs. Livingston. In most scenes, her role is to serve Eddie (Brandon Cruz) and his father (Bill Bixby).

It can be a little cringe-inducing now to watch this Oscar-winner in a role that does little more than reinforce a Western fantasy of Asian women, but like most minority actors of her era, Umeki — who died in 2007 at 78 of complications from cancer — faced what must have been an agonizing choice between being visible, in roles that were beneath her, or being unseen altogether. She chose the former, remaining an enigma in the public imagination, but her true feelings about Hollywood may have been more complex. “I asked her, ‘Why did you agree to do the pidgin English?’” her son, Michael Hood, says now. “Her answer was very simple: ‘I didn’t like doing it, but when someone pays you to do a job, you do the job, and you do your best.’”

Still, she found ways to express how she really felt. Cruz, who starred as Eddie on Courtship until he was 10, remembers Umeki’s commitment despite her thankless part. “From growing up around Miyoshi for four years, I didn’t sense a lot of joy, but I felt her strength and her determination,” he says, adding that instead of complaining, Umeki used her standing to open doors for fellow Asian actors — including Pat Morita and George Takei, who both guest-starred on the series — and to improve on-set life. Once, after noticing how Bixby relocated his dressing room closer to the stages, she made her own request. “Miyoshi just looked around, saw what was happening, and said to the producers, ‘I want a trailer, and I want it parked outside,’ and she got it,” Cruz says, noting that Umeki began helping to negotiate them for everyone else. “Miyoshi got what she wanted by just being smart and quiet.”

Quiet, sure, but never meek. Hood says she chose to retire from acting after Courtship was canceled in 1972. “I know it sounds weird nowadays, but she wanted to be a housewife and a mother,” Hood says. “When I asked her why years later, she said she had achieved everything she wanted to achieve. Her dream was to come here and entertain.”

That dream, though, seems to have come at a cost to her spirit. Shortly after her husband, Randall Hood, passed away in 1976, Umeki etched out her name on her Oscar and then threw the trophy away. To this day, her son isn’t sure why she disposed of it, though he says the circumstances of her life at the time — as a newly single mother raising a teenager — probably didn’t help. (“When my father passed away, Mom took it real hard,” he remembers.) But even though it seemed to have been an act of rage, her explanation to him at the time appeared to avoid any expression of strong emotion. “She told me, ‘I know who I am, and I know what I did,’ ” Hood says. “It was a point of hers, to teach me a lesson that the material things are not who she was.”

(Entertainment Weekly, February 22, 2018)

[lockefanfic]

The Girl with the Purple Hair

A/N: No smut here, guys, sorry to disappoint you - just some fluff. I wrote this fic literally four (!) years ago - one of my first k-pop fics and my first non-smut fic. I never reposted it here for some reason, but an ask I received recently got me to re-read it and I remembered how proud I was of it when I wrote it, so here it is. Please don’t judge me :P

---

Purple.

 It’s the first word that comes to mind when you see her. And how could it not be, given the color of her hair? It’s not like purple hair is a common thing - not like there are other people in the noisy, crowded bar that have purple hair. In fact, this is probably the first time you’ve seen someone in person with purple hair. Normal people had normal colored hair, like black or brown or blonde. Her hair isn’t some lazy dye job, either, with shades and highlights and a gradient to the violet strands.

 You don’t want to be caught staring, and so you steal glances at her every now and then, and every time you look her way, the first thing you notice is the wavy strands of purple as they play about her shoulders, falling lazily down like a waterfall on an alien world, where the water happens to be purple.

 Beautiful.

 It’s the next word that comes to mind, because were anyone to look just a little past the eye-dazzling color of her hair, they’d find a beautiful face, made with delicate, small features. She is traditionally beautiful in the sense that any man or woman  would agree with you if you said “here is an attractive human being.” There is a timelessness, a universality to her beauty. She could have been born a hundred years ago and still be considered pleasing to the eye - purple hair aside, she could be a painting of a woman from a time gone by, dressed up in the fashion of a model from the magazines of today.

 There is a playfulness about her features at the moment, as she indulges in conversation with the three other girls at her table. Her three friends are nothing to sneeze at, but she makes them all pale in comparison - part of it is the ridiculous, daring color of her hair, but there is something more than that. She possesses a magnetism, an allure that makes her stand out amongst three girls that, were they anywhere else, would easily be the most attractive girls in the room.

 You’re not alone either, sitting as you are with a few of your friends at your own table on the other side of the small bar. It is Friday evening, and as is custom with your co-workers, you all headed to the bar to celebrate another week gone by. But they are currently immersed in a conversation about some work-related topic, some absent co-worker or client (you weren’t really sure anymore) that was frustrating them. Uninterested in the topic, you found your attention drifting, naturally, to the girl with the purple hair.

 You notice that she has a certain aloofness about her, a certain detached nature from the conversation her three friends are having, and for a moment you wonder if perhaps she is in the same boat as you - stuck at a bar with friends who are babbling about co-workers or video games or guys or shopping or cars or clothes or those girls in the random k-pop video playing on one of the big screen TVs, when clearly you’d rather be anywhere but there.

 The other three girls seem like average girls, typical of the type you’d see at a downtown bar on a Friday night, out to have a good time with friends whilst under the influence of perhaps one too many alcoholic beverages. They are the type that would head to a club after they are sufficiently liquored up at this bar, spend the night dancing, post a group picture on Instagram when the night is at its peak, and then make a post on Facebook about how awesome it was the day after.

 But the girl with the purple hair seems different from the other three.

 She lets her gaze wander, and for a split second you are afraid again that perhaps she would catch you staring, but thankfully her eyes drift in a direction opposite from you. She lets a small, almost imperceptible sigh escape her lips, and you wonder if perhaps she would rather be somewhere else, perhaps at home on the couch binge watching some random show on Netflix, or playing Overwatch, or indulging in some random artistic pursuit that you didn’t even know existed.

 She seems like the type that would play Overwatch. She seems like the type that paints, or makes her own earrings that she sells on Etsy, or likes to watch movies in foreign languages. Maybe she watches them with the subtitles off sometimes, just to see if she can understand what they’re talking about simply from the universality of gestures made by foreign hands and the tones of foreign voices coming from foreign mouths.

 The sudden realization that you are framing this random girl in your mind rattles you a bit, and you smile to yourself as you shake your head, as if to rid those stupid, childish thoughts. You didn’t know this girl, not even in the slightest, and it was wrong of you to impose a character, a personality, on someone you knew nothing about.

 You play idly with the small glass of whiskey in your hand, watching as the amber brown liquid swirls about. You take a sip and appreciate the warm taste of it in your mouth and down your throat, appreciating the soft burn, the soft warmth it leaves behind.

 You take a moment to try to tune back into the conversation your friends are having, but they are knee-deep in a conversation about a Super Nintendo game. You loved vintage games - there was something about the original plastic in your hands, and the classic, blocky pixels on your screen, that made it feel more authentic in the way an emulator on a modern console could never be.

 You are about to join in on the conversation, about to tell your friends about some random game you picked up online, when a movement on the other side of the bar catches your attention - the girl in the purple hair is raising a glass. One of her friends is speaking earnestly, it appears, and after finishing her little speech the brunette girl next to her gives her a hug - perhaps it was a toast? Perhaps it is the brunette’s birthday? It probably was. Either way, the girls clink their glasses together, and down their shots in one gulp.

 The girl in the purple hair scrunches her face as she forces the strong liquor down her throat. Immediately you think that perhaps it the cutest thing you’d ever witnessed, and you find that a small smile has appeared, unconsciously, on your lips.

 The four girls share that wonderful post-shot reaction with each other, complaining about how awesome that small bit of alcohol they just had was. Together three of them tease the orange-haired, thin girl who is struggling with the alcohol and having a coughing fit. They laugh and one of them grabs her phone to take a picture of the poor girl, who, to her credit, is laughing along with them, probably out of embarrassment.

 The girl with the purple hair joins in on the fun, saying something that must have been hilarious, for all three of her companions burst out in laughter - including the thin girl struggling with the shot. The girl smiles, and her eyes narrow to thin half-arcs. In that moment she is the picture of happiness and joy.

 She says something else to her group - you assume it is her declaring that the next round is on her. She stands, and the girls make way for her to leave their table.

 For the first time you get a glimpse of her from head to toe. She is wearing a short, black dress, and what appears to be a grey patterned collared shirt beneath it. The dress is plain and relatively short but not overly so, showing off her long, slender legs without being improper or overly suggestive. It’s an interesting outfit; classy enough to be worn to work, whilst casual enough for a night out with the girls.

 Here again she differs from her compatriots, who appear to be dressed in typical club girl outfits, with short tops and skirts, heels and small, glamorous purses and accessories. If ever there was a club girl starter kit, they were perfect models.

 But the girl with the purple hair, as you’ve come to see, is a little different from her friends.  

 You watch as she approaches the bar. There is an elegance in the way she walks, which is admirable considering the alcohol you presume she’s consumed thus far this evening.

 Later on, you’ll wonder where your sudden burst of confidence came from. But at that moment, when the girl with the purple hair reaches the bar and tries, unsuccessfully, to flag down the overly busy bartender, you see an opportunity.

 Hastily, you mumble something to your friends about grabbing the next round, and step away from the table. Out of the corner of your ear, you hear one of your friends wonder where you’re going, and another say that you still have an almost full pitcher at your table - but they are irrelevant now. Nothing else exists aside from the thirty feet between you and the spot at the bar next to the girl with the purple hair.

 Where did this come from, this sudden burst of confidence, this sudden need to get up and go over to this girl to talk to her? Was it the liquor, the liquid confidence coursing through your veins? No. It was the desire, nay, the need to speak to this girl, the need to see if she really was everything you’d built up in your mind. You needed to speak to her, to ask her her name, maybe find out a little about her. Even if she shot you down before you could get a sentence out, well, at least you had tried. You couldn’t bear the thought of wondering what might have been had you not done something.

 Ten feet away. You take a deep breath, and ready what you are about to say in your mind. Some comment about her hair? A stupid, corny joke, just to break the ice?

 Five feet away. Maybe some witty comment about bad bartenders?

 Two feet - and suddenly your thoughts disappear, and your mind goes blank as the girl with the purple hair turns her head and makes eye contact with you. Later you would realize that moment seemed to go on forever. You were hardly the mushy, sentimental type, but you finally understood why the movies slow that moment down, why the soft music plays in the background during those scenes. You wonder if this is what it feels like when someone who will be important in your life looks at you for the first time.

 You are relieved, beyond words, to see a smile appear on her lips.

 You smile back, although you wonder if perhaps the nervousness coursing throughout every fibre of your being is having an effect on your smile, and if you are actually grimacing oddly at her instead of smiling. But your mouth and lips miraculously follow the orders sent to them by your dazzled mind, because her smile widens a little bit in the way that smiles do when they are returned.

 It is just a second, maybe two, of the many billions of seconds in your life, but it felt like an eternity.

 You reach the bar, your legs - your wonderful, reliable, stable legs - by some miracle not failing you and delivering you safely to the bar without collapsing due to sheer nervousness. You remember who you are, what you came here to do, and you try to act as casual as your nerves could allow you to. You make a show of trying to flag down the bartender, but he is busy on the other end of the bar catering to some especially loud patrons.

 Your mind is racing, trying and failing to remember what it was you were going to say to the girl with the purple hair, your nerves suddenly afire at the mere proximity of the young woman you’d been stealing glances at all night. You were far from inexperienced with the opposite sex, far from being some timid fool when it came to approaching them. But this one was different. This one was special.

 Maybe you should just say hi. Start simple, y’know? But dammit, that never works. You needed something witty, something memorable, something that would make her laugh and giggle and think ‘clearly this man’s shirt is made of boyfriend material and I should throw myself into his arms posthaste.’ You don’t get that with hi!. No one gets that with hi. Girls want someone cocky and confident and sure of himself. No one ever just says hi! You know who approaches girls and says hi? Single guys, that’s who! Don’t just say hi!

 Dammit! What were you going to say? Your mind races, tries to think back to other times you’d approached girls, tries to remember what you said to them when you were successful. Gah! Your mind fails you, returns only a simple blank slate, as though your mind had put on its hat and jacket, hung up a sign that said “you’re on your own, kid,” and then started to walk home.

You tap your fingers nervously on the bar surface, trying, and perhaps failing, to appear as casual as possible as you stare, blankly, in the general direction of the too-busy bartender as he struggles to pour the correct kinds of alcohol in the correct kinds of glasses in the correct proportions.

 Clearly you needed to make some witty comment to break the ice. A small joke, perhaps? A corny one, or a genuinely funny one? What was a good joke… dammit! Damn you, mind, and your vacation time! Perhaps mention something… about… sports! Yes, it was a bar, and there were sports playing on the TVs. Maybe she was a hockey fan? Or soccer? What if she liked one, but not the other? Which sport had the highest proportion of purple haired fans? What if she thought sports were stupid, a male-dominated dick measuring contest that wasn’t worth her time or attention, and she thought less of you for liking them? Dammit!

 Maybe you should comment on her hair? Maybe something along the lines of… perhaps… using her hair to get the bartender’s attention? Then segue into how it got your attention. That’s it. Hahahaha, you laugh nervously in your mind’s eye. Then she would say how she was hoping you’d come over to talk to her, and you’d say she was awesome and you’d go on a date the next day and get married a month after that and later you’d have kids and live happily ever-

 There is a soft tap on your forearm. You turn, nervously, to the girl with the purple hair, and the sight of her face, her eyes locked on yours, that bright smile once again on her lips, causes your heart to skip a beat like it was a crack on the sidewalk.

 The next day, when you’d recovered from the whirlwind of the night’s events, you’d realize that her first words to you, the first sounds you’d hear from her voice, would sound like music. And it was crazy, considering it was just a single syllable, a single word, but someone could have told you that the entirety of Beethoven’s works were held within that syllable, and you’d have believed it.

 The girl with the purple hair’s mouth opens, her lips part, a she leans towards you with a soft smile and says:

 “...Hi.”

[variousqueerthings]

Tom Hardy Movies rated least to most queer

I made a list of some Tom Hardy movies and I rated them based on my own, non-specific criteria about what makes a movie queer. Results below the cut.

(Some films not included, because I haven’t watched them yet, because Mr Hardy’s only in them for a few minutes, because the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to this list, or because I just don’t want’em here. TV series also not included. The list is organised into both groups and ratings, because I’m doing The Most.)

Movies are divided into four groups and rated from 0 – 10 on the Queer-Scale, scroll down to the bottom if you want the ratings without the commentary.

Disclaimer: This list is subjective. Don’t come at me because I didn’t rate Inception higher, Nolan himself is as queer as cargo shorts. 

1. This movie would make more sense if it were queer

If this movie were queer it… might not become a perfect film all of a sudden, but it’d make a hell of a lot more sense than what’s actually going on. With an occasional dose of “are the cis-straights okay?”

This Means War (2012): So Chris Pine and Tom Hardy are ostensibly both in love with Reese Witherspoon, but say “I love you” to each other pretty much constantly throughout the movie and their friendship is often presented as a domestic partnership. Cool, cool, cooool.

Queer Rating: 2 out of 10. This movie hate-crimed me by having Tom Hardy literally spell out his relationship with Chris Pine, only for the script to then have him say… “can you imagine all that… but with a woman…” Later on the movie explicitly denies polyamory is possible. Fuck this film.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012): Batman movies should always be queer. Mr. Hardy’s the only one who acceptably camps it up, despite Nolan’s best attempts to make him “acceptably gruff.” No matter what you do, Bane is a massive daddy in a mask and thanks to Mr Hardy’s honestly iconic fucking speech pattern in this film, it goes from pretty atrociously straight to just queer enough to imagine a future where Robert Pattinson plays batman and maybe adopts a bunch of kids.

(the only truly decent mask in this franchise tbh)

Queer Rating: 3 out of 10. Mr Hardy’s back is the one that’s actually broken carrying any semblance of fun in this overly long movie all on his own.

Lawless (2012): Wow, this really was the year of the not-queer-enough, wasn’t it? Look, it’s “based on a real story,” but it’s also a movie and movies don’t need to stick to the truth, and this one certainly doesn’t. Was the guy queer in real life? I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is that it’s just kind of an eh movie and maybe being queer would add something to it. One of those “but why make someone queer? because it’s always more interesting to do so,” movies.

Queer Rating: 3 out of 10. It’s just not queer. But Tom Hardy wears cardigans and described his character as a “mother figure,” which adds an interesting dynamic to him.

2. Actually Queer but in a homophobic way

Tom Hardy plays a canonically queer character, yaaay. The whole movie contains a strange sense of the director being too not-queer to actually engage with that and everything around him is almost aggressively straight, noooo.

RocknRolla (2008): Honestly this movie has the funniest coming out scene ever + that familiar undertone of “all these manly men secretly want to fuck each other” is only heightened by one of them actually being gay and in love with his best friend. It’s such a fucking… it’s such a movie. Personally I find Mark Strong, Idris Elba, Thandie Newton, and, of course, Tom Hardy to be really hot in it, so that’s a plus. There’s a scene in which Strong’s character teaches another gangster how to do a proper backhand. It’s really gay of him. Also slow-dancing at a gay club. Butler’s character needs to get himself together, you really don’t think 2008 Tom Hardy is hot? Mate.

(left to right: functional queer, disaster queer, distinguished queer)

Queer Rating: 6 out of 10, for having an actual gay character who is played by Tom Hardy doing a sexy phonecall voice to another guy, but then there’s that feeling you can’t shake that the whole movie is vaguely uncomfortable about it, like a family member awkwardly patting you on the shoulder after they found out you were queer second-hand, but they’ve still got 50 years of bias to unlearn. Also Thandie Newton is killed, fuck that noise. 

Legend (2015): If I had a nickle for the amount of times Tom Hardy’s played a gay gangster, I’d have two nickles. Which isn’t a lot, but weird that it happened twice (looks at Peaky Blinders and thinks it ought to be three times). I’ve watched Legend three times and every time it just… loses me. And because this is a biased list, I’ll only specifically mention that it fails to make Ron’s queerness anything but a way for him to shock others. Gangsters could be gay? Gasp! On the upside Tom Hardy has so much sexual tension with everyone in this movie, including himself (why would you do that? Asks Ron, bemused. Because I can’t kill you, no matter how much I fucking want to, hisses a blood-soaked Reggie right into his ear. It’s hot).

Queer rating: 5 out of 10 because the film is just not very queer for a movie with several queer men in it.

3. Straight as a forced family dinner

It’s straight.

Locke (2013): He’s a married man who had an affair and trying to deal with the fallout of it. This isn’t a spoiler for most of the movie, it’s a pretty neat movie where we look at Tom Hardy having a bit of a mental breakdown and taking lots of phonecalls (my personal hell). Is it queer? Not in the slightest.

Queer Rating: 2 out of 10 for Hardy’s face being in almost every shot.

The Revenant (2015): Yeah, yeah, DeCaprio’s and Hardy’s characters are obsessed with each other, yeah it’s a man’s world where the only women are dead wife, kidnapped sexually assaulted native princess, or background whore, yeah, they fight each other and there’s a ton of grunting, but also… I just fucking don’t like this movie. The thin line where a storyline like this one becomes queer might be crossed for others, but not for me. Fuck these guys and their stupid  bear fights.

Queer rating: 3 out of 10 for it being about dirty men in the middle of nowhere (but you could just watch Brokeback Mountain or The Lighthouse or God’s Own Country or any Mad Max, or, or, or…)

4. Queer? Queer. Queer? … Queer…

The plots, aesthetics and/or characters played by Tom Hardy lend themselves to a queer reading, even if there is no overt intention towards queerness. Often this is because of a deliberate lack of heterosexual and/or cisgender writing, which in this day and age is still pretty uncommon not to include within a plot.

Inception (2010): Okay, I don’t even need to write about the added “darling,” or the “go to sleep Mr Eames.” I don’t need to go on about the absolutely bonkers amount of fanfiction written for Eames and Arthur, based on a few minutes of film and a boatload of chemistry. It’s queer.

Queer Rating: 7 out of 10, because the actual plot of the film isn’t very queer, but between the Arthur/Eames dynamic and Elliot Page, Nolan was really given a gift he didn’t deserve.

Warrior (2011): Okay, so first off, this might be my favourite Tom Hardy film, at least some part of my brain is fixated on it at almost all times and I’m considering watching it for the third time in two weeks. I don’t only consider it queer based on Mr. Hardy’s character, although he has no romantic or sexual interest and could be read as aroace, but because of the themes, especially those surrounding said character, who is coded as a caregiver to women and through close emotional connections to men. It’s got possibly unintentional deconstructions of masculinity and two men (brothers) who need to forgive each other and can only do so through the catharsis of violence. It speaks to me as a transmasc with several cis brothers, struggling with my own masculinity. It’s not at all written for me, but I find myself all over it. I could talk about this movie forever.

Queer Rating: 8 out of 10. I’m not allowed to say any more or I’ll never stop writing about it. I love you Tommy…

The Drop (2014): Bob’s lack of sexual and/or romantic interest in Naomi is so strange to her that she doesn’t know what he would want from her otherwise. Bob really just wants to raise a dog with her (and also forgiveness for past sins). Bob is such a rare ace and possibly aro coded character, it really throws me every time I watch this film how obvious it is. Bonus points for also being autistic-coded and not in the stereotypical ways.

(Tom Hardy’s most challenging role: pretending he doesn’t know dogs)

Queer Rating: 9 out of 10 because it’s so fucking rare to see ace and aro coded characters that aren’t, you know…. serial killers. Also Tom Hardy adopts a puppy and has a very cute, kinda lispy voice. How often does Tom Hardy play softer men like this?

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): Very deliberately no sexual or romantic writing included in Max’s and Furiosa’s relationship. Sure, there’s not a lot of time for that in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, but it was also done with a purpose! “It was always going to be two warriors on par, starting off with very little respect for each other and ending up with a massive respect for each other.” - Charlize Theron. “So of course they meet, of course there’s a relationship, an unspoken understanding. A recognition.” - Tom Hardy.

Queer Rating: 9 out of 10. It’s not just the characters, but the world and it’s apocalyptic BDSM leather scene, the questions it asks about sustainability and about people as tools, and the found family. It’s about overcoming violence through multiple kinds of love. And it’s about watching a guy playing flame-thrower guitar. What could be queerer?

Venom (2018): Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same… No, but Eddie is queer. The only question is whether the sequel will acknowledge that aspect or not, but even if not. Even if it manages to straightly bypass the reality of a symbiotic relationship with a genderless? genderfluid? being from another world that is linked to you down to your very cells and understands you more intimately than any other person possibly could… even if all that: Eddie is queer. Venom and Eddie are in a relationship. Any relationship Eddie ever enters into will automatically become a thrupple. He makes out with Venom in the movie! Eddie is queer.

(aw yeah that tongue is going down his throat)

Queer Rating: 9.5 out of 10, because it’s still coded by the creators in the language of bromance (hey, bro, is it gay if we’re physically and emotionally closer than any other people on earth?), but the movie is so, so camp and Mr Hardy’s acting choices are beautiful – the screaming? The lispy soft voice and lack of taking up space? The lobster tank? The only people who don’t know how queer this is are the people making it apparently. Fingers crossed for that sequel!

Hon. mentions:

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002): Star Trek – even at it’s worst (especially at its worst?) – is camp af + Hardy is a straight-up baby in this film.

Bronson (2008): It’s about a real person who’s still alive, so I won’t comment on the actual man. However the film seems to code the character Bronson along an ace line and also has genderqueering Vaudeville. Someone let Tom Hardy do more of whatever was going on in those stage-bits.

(this right here: this the good shit)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011): Another ensemble piece not massively about Hardy’s character, but it’s a movie that centers around queerness in a strange, depressing way. Tom Hardy’s character isn’t queer. Colin Firth and Mark Strong are though. The book makes me cry.

Peaky Blinders (2013-): Because it’s a TV series I left it out. There’s a lot of straight nonsense going on there, but Alfie Solomens is gay. There’s nothing in the series that disputes that and plenty that lends itself to the reading.

Dunkirk (2017): Tom Hardy plays an RAF pilot in a deep emotional connection with the other main RAF pilot. That’s immediately gay. However he’s not in the movie much because of the way it’s constructed, so I left it off.

Queer Ratings (least to most)

No queer to be found here traveller:

This Means War: 2 out of 10 - illegal movie, Tom Hardy swore he wouldn’t do another rom-com after

Locke: 2 out of 10 - straight Welshman and his straight problems. He pretty though

Lawless: 3 out of 10 - cardigan-Hardy being a mother-hen, but very straight for all that

The Dark Knight Rises: 3 out of 10 - a superhero movie that doesn’t deserve Mr Hardy’s camp talents (unlike Venom)

The Revenant: 3 out of 10 - doesn’t give me what I want out of a movie full of dirty, bearded men

Queer but we deserve more:

Legend: 5 out of 10 - timid homosexuality, considering the source material. 

RocknRolla: 6 out of 10 - hey bro, is it gay if we kill the only female lead in our massive ensemble cast

The queerest of Hardy’s:

Inception: 7 out of 10 - Elliot Page and JGL kissing was an all-around terrible choice that made no sense, we know the truth, Nolan

Warrior: 8 out of 10 - I’m still crying, Edgerton’s crying, Hardy’s crying, we’re all crying, and I think that’s really emotionally healthy and queer of us

Mad Max: Fury Road: 9 out of 10 - non-romantic love in the time of BDSM post-apocalyptic wastelands is something that can actually be so personal

The Drop: 9 out of 10 - “Fucking punk. Go out to dinner dressed like you're still in you living room! You wear those big hippity-hoppity clown shoes! You speak to women terribly! You treat them despicably! You hurt harmless dogs that can't defend themselves! I'm tired of you man. I'm tired of you. You embarrass me!”

Venom: 9.5 out of 10 - Sometimes a relationship is an anxious reporter, the sentient goo inhabiting his body, his kinda-ex-girlfriend and her new doctor boyfriend, and I think that’s beautiful