#i was granted exceptional powers for being bisexual and you expect me not to use them? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

echo-bleu · 4 years ago

Text

jump and hope it’s not a cliff

Summary: Five times Alec and Magnus come out, and one time they come home.

“I’m gay,” he blurts out.

Some part of him still expects it to be earth-shattering, but it’s not. It’s almost nothing, just a word, a single syllable that falls out of his lips easily. It doesn’t suddenly make everything click into place, or scramble his whole being.

It’s just a fact.

Malec, about coming out and pride and supporting each other.

A/N: This is set in the same universe as map out a world and there are a few callbacks, but this should easily stand on its own. Alec is autistic, and everything else is mostly like canon, except that I stretched out the timeline. Part 1 to 3 are set somewhere during season 2, 4 during season 3 and the last two at some point in the future. The title is a quote from Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (thank you Cor for the suggestion).

A huge thank you to the amazing @moonlight-breeze-44 who did a great job betaing this and cheering me on, as well as all the wonderful people in the Malec Discord Server for helping me come up with some of these scenes and being super supportive. This fic was truly a work of love and it's very close to my heart, so it's a little daunting to finally post it!

Warnings: part 5 contains a transphobic character who says very transphobic things. You might want to skip that part if it's a sensitive subject. The rest contains mentions of (mostly past) queerphobia and ableism, but it's all fairly light.

Read on AO3.

Alec can’t remember a specific moment when they came out to each other. He remembers Magnus openly flirting with him — right in front of his siblings, too, and Alec is just embarrassed by how utterly clueless he was, though Magnus seems to think it was adorable — and his own clumsy attempts at flirting back, once he got over his confusion. But he doesn’t remember ever saying “I’m gay.”

He’s not sure he’s ever said it out loud, to anyone, like the word is heavy and draining and it’s something best left half-implied, a whisper of a suspicion rather than a hard fact; despite the evidence. Alec is attracted to men — is attracted to Magnus, really, because besides his mistaken infatuation with Jace, he’s never felt that pull for anyone else — but he doesn’t speak of it. Magnus just seemed to know, just like Izzy did, just like Jace did, or maybe he took a leap of faith and he’s really good at appearing more confident than he actually is.

What he does remember is skimming through Magnus’ Clave file, that day before they went to meet him at his club, and the leap his heart made when he read about Magnus’ well known “proclivities” towards lovers of all genders. It was followed by fear and disgust, because of course the Clave would write this down as proof of Magnus’ untrustworthiness and dangerous behavior. Alec was dangerously close to thinking that way, back then, too terrified of people finding out about him to fully question what he’d been taught to believe. He tucked the information into a corner of his mind, and he’d be hard-pressed to tell if it influenced his first impression of Magnus and how.

They’ve been dating for over two months now, and they’ve never spoken about it. They’ve never spoken about Alec’s very public coming out to the Clave beyond agreeing to a date. They’ve discussed past relationships — or lack thereof — and the political issues that come with a Shadowhunter dating a Downworlder, especially as they’re both prominent figures in the city, but they’ve never spoken of themselves or the couple they form in terms of queerness.

And now, staring at the rainbow cover of the new book in Magnus’ hands, Alec wonders why.

He shakes himself out of his thoughts and finishes hanging his jacket on the coat rack as Magnus puts down the book and stands up with a wide smile. They’ve decided on a quiet night in tonight — dinner and a movie — after a week that has been horrendously long for both of them. Unresolved issues are piling up at the Institute, but right now Alec just wants to relax and enjoy his boyfriend.

Boyfriend. He’s still getting used to that. He thought for so long that he could never have any of the things that so many people take for granted, and feeling for someone what he feels for Magnus, having it reciprocated, seemed the most unattainable of them all.

“You seem distracted,” Magnus remarks after a moment of silence in their dinner.

Alec looks up guiltily and stills his fingers, which have been tapping a discreet rhythm on his thigh. “Sorry,” he says, sheepish. “I didn’t mean to zone out.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“You,” Alec admits — it’s not a hardship to admit it at all. He spends most of the time that isn’t directly taken up by Institute business thinking about Magnus, in one form or another. He worries, often, that maybe it’s too much, that Magnus is going to find him too intense, but so far Magnus just preens at the attention.

“I’m flattered,” Magnus quips. “Anything specific?”

Alec’s eyes fall on the rainbow book on the coffee table again, across the room. It’s a book about queer history or something similar, something he hasn’t seen Magnus read about before. It’s flashy and mundane and distracting. There’s a strange tug in Alec’s stomach at just seeing a rainbow here, in Magnus’ living space, a fear that shouldn’t be there anymore.

“I’m gay,” he blurts out.

It’s just a fact.

“Okay,” Magnus says slowly, frowning a little like he can tell he’s missing something. “I already knew that, Alexander.”

Alec runs his thumb down the fabric of his jeans and works his jaw. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m not sure I did.”

Magnus frowns further, uncomprehending, then his face lights up. “You’ve never actually said it, have you? If you came out at the wedding—” he waves a hand.

“That wasn’t planned, and my parents aren’t exactly interested in talking about it,” Alec says. “I kinda feel like I used you, actually. We weren’t even dating or anything, and there’s a gap between flirting with me and kissing me in front of the entire Institute.”

Magnus shakes his head. “I was surprised, but I’ve never been shy or particularly closeted, if that’s what you mean. And I was definitely hoping that you’d call off the wedding. It was a hell of a way to come out, though.”

“It sure didn’t help my standing with the Clave,” Alec mutters. “Or my relationship with my parents. But I don’t regret it. I regret not really giving you a choice, though. Even if you’re not in the closet, I know the Institute doesn’t represent something positive for you, and publicly being with a Shadowhunter can’t be good for your reputation.”

“My reputation has been through much worse than this,” Magnus reassures him. “But I appreciate your concern. And I promise you I was a willing participant.”

Alec nods in acceptance and eats a few more bites of his risotto. Like everything Magnus conjures, it’s delicious. They eat in silence for a moment, but Alec feels Magnus’ gaze on him, intense but somehow not heavy.

“I’m bisexual,” Magnus finally says. “I’ve used many labels over the years, some whose meaning is very different now, and often no labels at all, but that’s the one I like best.”

Alec carefully commits the information to memory and looks up to meet his eyes, to show that he’s listening.

“Did you always know?” he asks. “Even when you had no words for it?”

Magnus takes a moment to think about it. “I think so,” he answers. “It was always a part of me, like my magic or my eyes. I didn’t always accept it, but I knew.”

Alec nods, feeling like he can’t relate to that certainty. Clarity isn’t something he’s ever had about himself, about anything. Whether it’s about his sexuality, or his aspirations, or even who he is as a person, it’s always been muddled. The identities his parents and the Clave tried to impose on him, Shadowhunter and Lightwood and soldier, have never felt quite right, like he doesn’t fit into the boxes he desperately tries to hide in, but neither have the labels he’s come across since, not really.

“I’m gay,” he murmurs to himself again. He’s not sure it feels right. Maybe he just needs to get used to it, after years of not daring to apply the word to himself. Maybe it’s really just a word, and its power drained out with the need to hide. Alec shakes his head. It’s better than anything else. It’s enough. It has to be, right?

Magnus claps his hands once, making a bowl of popcorn appear on his knees. “Here,” he says. “The real movie night experience.”

He had been horrified to learn that Alec has never done that before. His siblings have sneaked out to go to the movies with their teenage dates, but Alec was always the good son, and the Institute only has one TV in the break room that is certainly not casually watched by the Head of the Institute, which Alec has functionally been since he was sixteen.

Magnus doesn’t count the few classic movies Alec watched on his own on his laptop in the safety of his room as a real movie night experience. Movie night is, by definition, something you do with others.

He passes the bowl of popcorn to Alec, taking a few pieces with his other hand and popping them into his mouth. They’re sitting side by side on the couch in his living room, rearranged for the occasion. Magnus has pushed aside the two armchairs that usually occupy the other side of the coffee table in favor of a huge wide screen TV, which is currently displaying the opening scene of The Fellowship of the Ring.

“Why does it include popcorn?” Alec frowns, taking a few from the bowl and passing it back. He’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, a fluffy pillow on his lap and his new tangle toy in his hand. He’s very recently started to loosen up around the loft and actually make himself comfortable, rather than constantly staying straight-backed and tense, and Magnus never tires of watching him stim and relax.

Magnus puts his feet up on the coffee table. “It’s tradition, Alexander!”

“Aren’t you way older than the invention of the cinema?”

“Come on, movie night is something you’re supposed to enjoy, not question,” Magnus says. “Shh, I love this bit,” he adds when Gandalf makes his entrance.

Alec huffs and sits back, but there’s a smile on his face, and he’s almost close enough that their thighs touch. Magnus lets him take the first step, knowing that Alec doesn’t always handle touch well, but by the time Frodo sets out of the Shire, Alec has sought out Magnus’ free hand and interlaced it with his own.

He listens amusedly to Magnus commenting on every moment of the movie, marveling at the landscapes and critiquing the largest departures from the books, which Alec hasn’t even read. He doesn’t say anything beyond making some noises at the right places, up until the first sword fights.

“But you can’t hold a sword that way!” he protests. “His posture is all wrong!”

Magnus holds back a laugh. “It’s a movie, darling. Cinematic aestheticism is more important than realism.”

“But this is wrong! How can anyone not see it?”

Magnus keeps it to himself that he definitely didn’t, in spite of his rather extensive training. His martial arts knowledge is very different from Alec’s sword-fighting techniques. “Just relax and let yourself enjoy it,” he says, squeezing Alec’s hand.

By the time they get to the Moria fight, Alec is leaning forward to watch more closely and sputtering. “That’s not how you hold a bow!”

Magnus shrugs. “He looks rather dashing while doing it, so who cares?”

“Who cares? I care! This doesn’t make any sense! Don’t these actors have a modicum of training?”

“I’m sure they do,” Magnus says. Alec’s indignation is rather hilarious, even if it doesn’t let him truly enjoy the movie. His purpose was to show it to Alec, anyway, not to watch it himself. Watching Alec’s reactions is endearing and more fun than the movie itself. “But they’re thinking more about making it look good than realistic. And they’re all really hot doing it, which doesn’t hurt.”

Alec blinks at that and tilts his head. “You think they’re hot?”

Magnus turns his head toward him in surprise. “Don’t you?”

Is Alec jealous? It doesn’t seem to fit with his character, not over such a small thing, but Magnus doesn’t know everything about him yet.

“I don’t know, I guess?” Alec shrugs. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

Magnus opens his mouth and closes it. He pauses the movie, and Alec frowns in surprise. “Alec, do you...who do you think is hot?”

“I, uh,” Alec hesitates. “I don’t know. Why is that important?”

“It’s not, necessarily, but most people don’t say ‘I guess’ when asked if someone is hot or sexy. You can have a type, but—” Magnus gestures in frustration, struggling to explain. “It’s something you see right away.”

Alec stares at him for a moment, lost. “I don’t… I’m not sure I understand. I mean, you’re beautiful. You’re hot, I suppose. Them—” he gestures at the TV. “I don’t know them.”

Magnus carefully doesn’t let the ‘I suppose’ hurt — he knows Alec doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. He smiles at the compliment, instead. “So you need to know someone to appreciate their sexiness?” he asks.

Alec takes a moment to think about it. “You’re the only one I’ve really thought of as sexy,” he says slowly. “And even then...it’s not something I’d think unprompted? It’s just not important to me, I suppose.”

“Alexander, are you asexual?” Magnus asks slowly.

For a moment, Alec looks like a fish out of water. He opens his mouth and closes it several times, searching for his words. He’s twisting his stim toy more and more nervously, so Magnus releases his hand to let him stim freely, putting his own hand on Alec’s thigh instead. Alec flinches away, though, so he lets him go.

“I don’t know,” Alec finally says. “Maybe? What if I am?”

“There’s a bunch of different identities under the asexual umbrella,” Magnus says. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

Alec freezes for a second, then squeezes his tangle toy hard in his hand. “Is it a problem? If I’m completely asexual?”

“No, of course not,” Magnus says hurriedly. “You’re wonderful the way you are.”

“Then why is it important?”

“For us?” Magnus checks. Alec nods without looking in his direction. “It just means that we need to talk about boundaries a little more than I’m used to. I want to do that with you, anyway, but maybe we should dig deeper than I anticipated.”

Alec nods tightly. “Okay.” He doesn’t sound like he really believes it.

“Alexander, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but it doesn’t make you lesser, or broken, if you don’t feel attraction to people. It’s just different. Some people are straight, some are gay, or bi, or something else. Some are ace.”

“But I’m gay,” Alec says.

It dawns on Magnus then. Of course, in the homophobic environment Alec grew up in, he would have defined a large part of his identity through his gayness, even before he was fully aware of it. Now that he’s come out, there are likely people at the Institute or even the Clave who only think of him as “the gay one”. Or “the gay one who is shagging a Downworlder,” probably, but Magnus doesn’t want to open that particular can of worms tonight.

“It doesn’t make you any less gay,” he says. “You can be asexual and homoromantic. Or gray-asexual or demisexual and still sexually attracted to men.”

“I think I’m attracted to you,” Alec says quietly. “I mean, sexually. I know I want to kiss you and date you, but I think I also want to have sex with you.” He’s red as a brick wall by the end of his sentence, but he bravely plows through, his voice even quieter. “I don’t think I was sexually attracted to Jace.”

Magnus nods as neutrally as he can. “And other people?”

Alec just shakes his head.

“Even romantically?”

He shakes his head again, his cheeks even redder. He’s started stimming again, so fast that his hands are a blur.

Magnus refrains from telling him that he feels giddy about being so special for Alec, because this isn’t something Alec chose. He doesn’t try to touch him, even though he wants to reach out. “So you’ve only been romantically attracted to people you already knew?”

“I don’t know,” Alec shrugs. “I didn’t really know you?”

“When did you start feeling attraction for me?”

Alec bites his lip, thinking. “I liked that you paid attention to me. No one gives me a second look, usually, unless I’m giving out orders. Jace and Izzy are easier to...approach, I guess. But I didn’t feel like...like you said, losing my breath and all that, until later. The day you said that, actually.”

“So you did know me by then,” Magnus says, trying to keep his voice neutral.

“Were you attracted to me from the beginning?” Alec asks hesitantly, like he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.

“Yes,” Magnus admits easily. “But attraction isn’t something you have to act on. I liked what I saw as soon as I laid eyes on you, but then I learned to appreciate you. Your personality, your sense of humor, your loyalty to your siblings. That’s not just attraction. That’s falling in love.”

“And asexuals can do that?”

“Some of them can, some of them can’t. Some want to and some don’t. There’s no one-size-fits-all with this.”

“So what am I?”

Magnus takes a breath, trying to figure out what Alec really needs to hear. Does he need a label? Or just reassurance? He decides to go for the option that feels the least patronizing and tries to answer his actual question. “You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that what you’re describing is demisexuality, and maybe also demi-romanticism. It means you need to know someone, to have an emotional connection to them, before you feel attraction. But you could also say that you’re gray-ace and gray-romantic, since you don’t experience attraction often or in the same way as most people, but you do have some attraction.”

Alec nods throughout, his eyes boring a hole into the TV he’s staring at with intense focus. Magnus can even see him mouth some of the words, trying them out. “I think that sounds right,” he says slowly. “I don’t know, I need to think about it more, but it’s a start.”

“You don’t need to settle on a label tonight,” Magnus tells him.

Alec swallows. “No, I know, but...you deserve to know. Even if you’re amazingly tolerant, you deserve to know what you’re getting into.”

Magnus closes his eyes briefly. “No, Alexander,” he says, pained. “Your identities are yours and yours alone, and you don’t need to put words on them for me. I’m not being tolerant; I love you for who you are, and anyone who can’t accept you, all of you, doesn’t deserve the time of the day. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Alec breathes out through his nose and stills his hands for long enough to look in Magnus’ direction. “Okay,” he murmurs with a tiny smile. He reaches out and takes Magnus’ hand in his. “I love you too.”

“Mister Bane, please refrain from interrupting me in the future.”

Magnus sighs. The meeting has been going on forever, and the President of the Spiral Council, a warlock older than himself but disliked by nearly the entire community, is being downright insulting by refusing to call him by his rightful title of High Warlock. He feels the usual prickle of his skin at the address, at the way she insists on the Mister.

“My apologies,” he relents, all energy to argue drained out of him. He’s been fighting her on this matter — a change in the interrogation protocols for the warlocks captured by Valentine, ultimately a waste of resources — for three hours, and he’s done. He glares at the assembled warlocks around the table, who all agree with him but don’t have the guts to speak up. Why does he always have to do all the work?

He sits through the rest of the meeting without saying a word, resolutely ignoring the constant taunts from the President. She’s not worth his time. Not if no one will back him up.

Magnus is tired and more than a little upset when he makes it back to his loft. Minor inconveniences are piling up to make today one of the worst days of work he’s had in awhile. At least Alec will be here tonight, on his night off from patrol.

Magnus magically summons the few bills that have been left in his mundane mailbox downstairs at the same time as he takes off his jacket and haphazardly throws it on the floor of his bedroom. His heart constricts a little more at the sight of the address, Mister Magnus Bane. He doesn’t want to deal with this today, but he can’t seem to escape it.

He banishes the bills and changes his outfit to a silk robe with a snap of his fingers. There, better. At least now he’s comfortable.

Sighing, he sits down at his makeup console. He looks at himself critically for a moment. He went overboard with the makeup this morning, and the heavy, dark eyeshadow that he thought made him look mysterious now just seems to carve in his eye sockets, and he looks gaunt instead. He makes it disappear, leaving only the light eyeliner lines.

He woke up with a strong need to shave off his goatee, along with most of the hair on his body. He goes through one of these phases every now and then. He would usually do it straight away, but this time, he hesitated. What will Alec think, if he comes over tonight and finds Magnus smooth-skinned, not only his face but also his chest and legs?

Sure, Magnus could technically magic back the hair as soon as Alec gets here, but it doesn’t feel right.

“Everything okay?”

Magnus starts and almost falls off of his chair in surprise. Alec is standing at the door of his bedroom, in his socks. In his distraction, Magnus somehow missed him passing his wards, coming through the front door and removing his shoes.

“Fine,” he says. “Just a frustrating day. But you’re here now.”

Alec smiles. “I am. We can just chill out in bed, if you’re tired.”

“What about dinner?”

“I could do dinner in bed,” Alec shrugs. “I’ve been on my feet all day and most of last night. If I had my way, I wouldn’t move from bed for at least two days.”

“I could arrange that,” Magnus quips. He knows Alec would never go for it — for all that he says that, he’ll still be up at six on the dot tomorrow and unable to go back to bed. So Magnus has to take advantage of him while he’s here.

Snapping his fingers, he conjures a tray filled with Chinese food from a take-out place he knows Alec likes. “Dinner in bed it is,” he says.

“See, that’s why you’re my favorite man,” Alec smiles.

Magnus flinches. An actual, full-body flinch. He tries to cover it up by standing up, but Alec immediately spreads his arms to show his harmlessness, hunching over like he’s trying to make himself shorter. “I said something wrong,” he says.

“No, it’s fine, Alexander,” Magnus waves his hand, annoyed at himself.

“Please, Magnus. I can see it. You don’t have to tell me, but it would be better so I don’t do it again.”

“It’s just…” Magnus trails off, hesitating. He’s been putting off coming out to Alec, and he doesn’t know why. Or rather, he does know, but his fears are barely rational. Alec has taken him in stride so far, barely batting an eye, even at Magnus’ more extravagant habits. He had a truly amazing reaction to seeing Magnus’ warlock mark. So why would this be any different?

No, Alec won’t react badly. But if Magnus comes out now, it will become a thing. They’ll have to talk about it, explain, like every time he tells someone, and it will be weird for days. Magnus is tired. Tired of not being able to be who he is without everyone else forcing him into boxes he doesn’t fit in.

He’s tired and he doesn’t want to explain, but he also wants Alec to know. He wants him to know why words that seem perfectly normal and safe to Alec sometimes feel like a knife to Magnus’ back. He wants to be able to make jokes about his gender and have them understood. He wants to wake up next to Alec and know that his partner knows and respects him for who he is, fully.

He takes a deep breath. “I’m not a man. I’m nonbinary.”

Alec doesn’t move. His eyes widen a little, but he doesn’t turn away from Magnus, keeping his gaze somewhere around Magnus’ mouth as usual. Magnus can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to decide what to answer with.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “I don’t...I think I know what the word means, but I don’t know a lot about it. Do you want to tell me what it means to you or do you want me to research it first?” His gaze trails toward the bookshelf Magnus has put together of books on queer theory.

Magnus gapes, because this is so far from any reaction he expected that it didn’t even come to his mind as an option. “I—” he stammers. “I will tell you, but I’m too tired tonight. And maybe you could...read a couple things first? Would that be okay?”

“That’s why I offered,” Alec says, with a relieved smile.

“You’re amazing, Alexander. You know that?”

Alec grins, with that tiny frown that says he wants to refute it but knows Magnus won’t hear of it if he does. He still can’t take a compliment — he can’t, Magnus has come to learn, think of himself positively without remembering every time he’s been put down and belittled by the people who should have lifted him up. Magnus just pats his shoulder. “How about we go to bed? Tomorrow, we can talk.”

Alec nods, and Magnus realizes that he’s looking forward to it, to telling Alec about himself.

When Magnus wakes up the next morning, which is their day off — Magnus has adapted his own schedule to match Alec’s whenever possible — Alec isn’t in bed next to him. Magnus finds him in the main room, sitting crossed-legged in an armchair with his laptop on his lap, a full breakfast ready on the table. He’s obviously been up for a while, if he’s had time to prepare all that on top of his morning run and stretching routine.

“Hey,” he gives Magnus a wide smile.

“Did I oversleep?” Magnus asks. He’s definitely less of an early-riser than Alec, who tends to wake up with the sun whenever he hasn’t been on the night shift, but he’s usually awake by the time Alec comes back from his run.

“There’s no such thing on a day off, but I think you were tired,” Alec answers. “I’ve been up for three hours.”

“Oh my,” Magnus murmurs, checking the time with a wave of his hand. To his relief — and amusement — it’s only eight-thirty, definitely not that late by his standards. “What have you done with all this time?”

“Research,” Alec waves to the books on the coffee table in front of him, which Magnus only now notices. They’re from his LGBT+ book collection, and definitely his top choices for learning about gender identities. “I’m learning a lot.”

“Let me shower and we can talk about it,” Magnus decides, his body tensing with excitement and a touch of apprehension.

“Breakfast is ready when you are,” Alec smiles reassuringly.

He’s just serving coffee when Magnus comes out of the shower. Magnus hasn’t bothered to get dressed or do his makeup yet, avoiding his mirrors — which isn’t the easiest feat in his bathroom, which has no less than two full-length mirrors beside the one above the sink — because he’s not sure what he wants to look like today. His goatee still itches on his chin, but he needs to get a feel for Alec’s reaction before he goes ahead and shaves it.

He forbids himself from pulling at his facial hair and grabs his mug of coffee instead, hissing when it nearly burns his hand. “Hey, you okay?” Alec asks, his voice quiet and concerned.

“I’m fine, Alexander,” Magnus makes himself smile. There’s no reason for this to go badly. Last night, even though Alec didn’t know much, was already affirming and relieving.

The concern is always there, especially given the culture Alec comes from, but Magnus has seen Alec fight hard against his own racism and internalized homophobia, and more recently his internalized ableism — and Alec is someone who doesn’t relent until he makes things right. Especially when he’s the one who made mistakes. It’s going to be okay.

“Tell me what you need,” Alec says, meeting his eyes — something he only does when he wants to show Magnus his support, explicitly and deliberately.

“Ask me?” Magnus tries. He hates feeling this vulnerable. “Ask me whatever questions you have, without beating around the bush.” Don’t make it awkward and painful, please.

“Alright, I can do that,” Alec smiles softly, and Magnus melts a little, like every time Alec looks at him like that. He takes a sip of his coffee. “So, I’ve read that there are a lot of different nonbinary identities. Do you use any of those labels for yourself? If you want to tell me.”

Magnus swallows in gratefulness. “I don’t, not really,” he replies. “Most of those labels are very recent, and they don’t really match with how I’ve learned to think about myself. Even nonbinary doesn’t feel exactly right, even if I fit the definition. But I use it because it’s rare for me to feel part of a community, of a group of people who share that with me.”

Alec nods thoughtfully. “I think I can relate with that,” he says. “The community thing, I mean. I’ve never actually thought about my gender, not beyond where it relates to my sexuality, but I guess not needing to think about it is a good sign that I’m cis.”

“Probably,” Magnus shrugs. “Does it feel strange for you? Realizing that you’re not really dating a man?”

Alec takes the time to think about it, though he never completely looks away. “No,” he says finally. “I won’t lie, maybe a few months ago it would have, because...I fought against my own gayness so much that when I finally accepted it, I needed it to be clear-cut. But I don’t feel like that anymore. If I learned something about identities and labels, it’s that they shouldn’t be boxes where you have to cut off parts of yourself to fit inside. I love you. I’m gay. You’re nonbinary. Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

Magnus needs a few long seconds before he remembers how to breathe. “They don’t,” he murmurs when he can finally speak again. Alec isn’t usually eloquent, but he has a knack for finding exactly the right words sometimes. And surprising Magnus, every day.

“Yesterday, you reacted when I called you a man,” Alec says slowly. “I’m probably going to slip up a few times until I get used to it, but can you tell me how you want me to speak of you? What words I should use?”

“Yesterday I was irritated and dysphoric,” Magnus replies. “It usually isn’t a problem. I don’t love those words and I’d prefer to avoid them when it’s just us, but socially, I’ve been taken for a man for so long… I can’t say it doesn’t bother me, but I’m not sure I can really imagine anything else. Sure, I’ve had fun glamouring myself into something more feminine, or cultivating an androgynous style at different times, but I’m still...I’m more comfortable being seen as a man than as a woman. Warlocks are sometimes seen as sexless by mortals, like Seelies, because our customs are so different, and I’ve always played with those perceptions.”

“Your name is masculine, right?”

Magnus shrugs. “Yes and no. It uses the masculine marker in Latin, but Latin was a language with grammatical gender. There are masculine words referencing females, and the other way around. And it’s a dead language, anyway. It was dead before I was born. I don’t think of my name as masculine.”

“Then, that’s what’s important,” Alec says. “What about pronouns?”

“I’ve used many different pronouns in many different languages,” Magnus answers. “I’ve always been partial to languages with no gendered pronouns like Turkish, but I really don’t care. He/him pronouns don’t make me feel bad, and I’m used to them.”

“There are languages with no gendered pronouns?” Alec asks, fascinated.

“A number of them,” Magnus says. “We really need to travel more. But to go back to your question, maybe in a few years or decades, I’ll be more comfortable with the new gender-neutral pronouns in English like they/them, but it takes me a while to get used to new things. So he/him is fine for now.”

“Okay,” Alec nods. “What about...we’ve been calling each other boyfriends. Would you rather I use something else?”

Magnus laughs, relief finally washing over him. He was tenser than he realized, and it makes him feel like jelly, suddenly. “No, Alexander. Hearing you calling me your boyfriend is far too endearing to change that. Please keep doing it.”

Alec’s face illuminates with a wide smile. “My nonbinary boyfriend,” he says playfully. “I know we’ve only barely scratched the surface, but is there something else I should know right now?”

Magnus runs a few things through his head, deciding to keep them for later — he’s very curious, and not all that apprehensive anymore, of what Alec’s reaction to him in feminine lingerie might be — and strokes his chin. “Oh,” comes the illumination. “I really want to shave my face right now. It’s been too long since I last did that.”

“Okay,” Alec says. “That’s a gender thing?”

“Sometimes facial hair feels dysphoric,” Magnus replies. “Like today. Sometimes I just want to look different.”

“I love both looks,” Alec says. “I love all of your looks. I love how I never know what you’re going to go for in the morning.”

Magnus starts eating his pancakes, but he decides that he doesn’t want to wait. He conjures a hand mirror in front of his plate and runs his glowing hand over his chin carefully, leaving smooth skin behind. Alec smiles at him over his coffee mug and Magnus smiles back, glancing at his now hairless face in the mirror. That feels better. Maybe he’ll go ahead and wax his legs and his chest as well.

“Of all the days to be called out on patrol—”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Alec sighs, trying to appease Magnus’ annoyance by squeezing his hand. It’s Sunday, it’s the middle of the day, he wasn’t expecting a call from the Institute at all. “But the nest is in a busy metro tunnel just below the end of the parade. In a few hours, there’s going to be thousands of people down there, and who knows when the demons might try to attack the trains. And they’re bat demons, so they need my bow.”

The curse—and occasional blessing, if Alec is honest with himself—of being the only archer worth his salt in the New York Institute, is that despite now being the official Head, he’s still needed on the patrol roster. Most Institute Heads retire from the field, the administrative and political work being a full time job, but Alec still goes out with his siblings several times a week, and he usually leads the special teams called to handle demon surges.

Today, he curses that necessity with everything he has. Magnus has been excited about their first Pride together for weeks, and Alec was truly happy to do this with him.

“We were supposed to go to the parade,” Magnus sulks.

“I’m really sorry,” Alec repeats. “Maybe if we handle this fast enough, I can join you part-way through? I’ll do my best.”

Magnus looks at him critically. “No. I’m coming with you.”

“I know the parade is important to you—”

“It’s only important if we go together,” Magnus answers. “If I come with you, it will be faster, and then I can portal us into the procession directly, if there’s still time.”

“Alright,” Alec nods.

The team, larger than usual patrols because of the size of the demon nest, is almost ready when Alec and Magnus make it to the ops center. Alec quickly gets his bow and quiver and straps on his thigh holsters, and moves to signal the go ahead.

“Wait,” Magnus holds him up. “If we’re going to do this, we’ll do it in style.”

Alec frowns as he waves his hand, releasing a cloud of blue magic onto the two of them. Alec looks down at himself, his eyes gliding over his outfit before he clocks the changes. The lapel of his leather jacket now holds two prominent flag pins, a rainbow one and one with the black, gray, white and purple of the asexual flag. He sees matching pins, significantly larger, on Magnus’ vest, with his own flags. It’s the first time, as far as Alec knows, that Magnus has outwardly worn his nonbinary identity in the Institute, and he feels a swell of pride at the shine in Magnus’ eyes.

“Look at your arrows, sir,” Underhill’s voice comes from over his shoulder.

Alec twists his head to see the fletching of his arrows, usually red, is now brightly colored. Each fletch bears the colors of a different pride flag.

“So we can defeat the demons with pride,” Magnus smirks when Alec looks back at him.

“I like it,” Alec smiles. The mass of bright colors hurts his eyes a little, but the gazes of his teammates on them aren’t full of judgment but of amusement, and that’s a victory in its own right. He runs a hand over the little pins on his lapel.

“Um, sir?” Underhill asks, clearing his throat.

“Yes?” Alec turns to him, but he realizes that Underhill is looking at Magnus and not at him.

He gestures at the pins Magnus is wearing, and Alec can feel Magnus brace himself for a comment. “Could I, uh, have one too?”

Magnus blinks. “Of course,” he recovers quickly. “Rainbow flag?”

“Yeah,” Underhill nods.

Magnus snaps his fingers, and a pin as large as his own appears on Underhill’s chest.

“Thank you!”

Alec is certain he can see his subordinate’s eyes shine.

“Anyone else?” Magnus asks, full of mirth. A few people grumble, including Jace, until a young Shadowhunter takes a step forward.

“Can I have a trans pin?” she asks, her voice only wavering a little.

Alec feels a swell of pride. Kara is one of the youngest recruits, a sixteen year old who’s mostly kept to herself since she transferred to the Institute last winter, because he was the only Head willing to accept her chosen name and pronouns. Her face is set in stubborn determination as she fields her teammates' stares and stands in front of Magnus. Magnus beams at her. “Here you go, darling,” he snaps his fingers again. Kara looks down at the shiny pastel colored pin in reverence, and flashes him a smile.

“Are we ready to go?” Alec asks. He doesn’t want to break the moment, but they really need to move.

Magnus takes a step back and throws out a portal in front of them. “Let’s go kill some demons,” he says.

Alec grabs an aromantic-themed arrow from his quiver, smiling internally at the pun, and nocks it onto his bow string before stepping through the portal.

Alec does his best to pay attention to what Jia is telling him, but he’s not having the best time of it. He’s had a full glass of champagne already and it’s getting to his head a little, and the ambient noise isn’t helping his concentration — in fact, it’s loud enough that his head is pounding and he’s losing track of what’s going on.

And then, there’s Magnus. Alec keeps stealing concerned glances at him, standing across the room in conversation with an older Shadowhunter from the Prague Institute. It’s been at least ten minutes, and every time Alec looks, Magnus is wearing a new accessory.

Alec knows why Magnus elected for a plain look today, for their very first reception since they moved to Alicante. He wanted to avoid dragging attention to him, knowing that many people in attendance are doubtful toward the new High Warlock of Alicante. Tonight marks Alec’s official nomination as Inquisitor, and he wanted to spare Alec a scene.

Alec is starting to suspect that a scene may be unavoidable, and if the reason is what he suspects, then he will wholeheartedly defend Magnus. It started with earrings. Magnus went for a simple dark suit with almost no jewelry beside his wedding ring, but he’s now sporting a very shiny pair of diamond earrings. And a necklace. And a butterfly hair clip that probably costs more than a year of Alec’s now sizable salary.

And now, lipstick. Very obvious, bright red lipstick.

“I’m so sorry,” Alec turns back to Jia, “but I believe my husband needs my help.”

Even though she’s now his direct superior, he doesn’t wait to be dismissed and he strides through the room, his height and his new status meaning that everyone gets out of his way. Izzy catches his eyes briefly, and Alec signals at her to stand by.

By the time he’s made it to his husband’s side, Magnus’ hair has turned into a vibrant rendition of the nonbinary flag, and that’s not a good sign. Alec steps into his field of vision before putting a hand on his arm.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Peachy,” Magnus says through his teeth. “This gentleman right here was just telling me about a very strange sort of demon that possesses young Nephilim men and makes them pretend to be women in order to assault actual women.”

Alec blinks as he takes that in, as well as the poison in Magnus’ tone. He tightens his grip on Magnus’ arm, feeling the stares on them — Magnus’ new hair color is hard to miss.

“Really?” he asks innocently, tilting his head. “I’ve never heard of those demons. I should read up on them, so I can make sure every Institute is fully ready for an invasion. What did you say their classification was, Mr. Svec?”

The man gapes at him. “They’re...uh...I don’t…”

“That’s what I thought,” Alec says icily. “There’s no such thing. You’re Kara’s father, aren’t you?”

“That monster isn’t my son,” Svec spits out.

“No, you’re right. She’s not. She’s your daughter. And she’s absolutely thriving at the New York Institute, by the way. She’s the best fighter in her class. That’s what happens when people accept you for who you are.” Alec deliberately turns his back to the sputtering man and looks at Magnus. “Honey, it’s getting late, we should probably head home,” he says, purposefully speaking louder than he needs to. Magnus is trembling with rage, fighting to rein himself in. “Let me just tell Jia, okay?” he adds in a murmur, just for Magnus.

Magnus closes his eyes and nods. “Get me away from him,” he says.

Alec gently guides him over to Izzy, who immediately takes Magnus’ hand. “Let’s stay out of the crowd,” she says, nodding at Alec that she’ll take care of him.

Alec finds Jia with Aline by the buffet. “I can’t condone this kind of bigotry coming from the Head of an Institute,” he says through his teeth.

“I don’t think he’ll try that twice around you,” Aline chuckles, nodding toward Svec, who is now glaring at them from across the room, clearly ostracized. “He didn’t make any friends tonight.”

“What happened tonight isn’t enough to remove him, but as Inquisitor, you’ll be able to push for someone else to take his place when his contract is up in six months,” Jia says. “I understand your anger, Alec. But we can’t change people in a day.”

Alec remembers, not for the first time since she offered him the job of Inquisitor, that she’s not just the progressivist Consul that the most conservative Nephilim frown at, or the mother of one of his best friends. She’s also the person who once sentenced Clary to death without a second thought. If he wants change, he’ll have to bring it on himself.

He exchanges a look with Aline, thinking of the folder on his new desk, the proposal they might have a chance at getting through now that he’s the Inquisitor. Jia’s right, it won’t be done in a day. But it will happen. Alec will make it happen.

And if at some point in the meantime, he has the opportunity to get rid of a few bigots like Svec, he won’t turn his nose up at it.

“Magnus and I are going home,” he says. “Thank you for tonight.”

“Congratulations on the promotion again,” Jia nods. “I’ll expect you in my office at eight tomorrow.”

“Good night.” Alec has to unclench his fist to shake Jia’s hand, and he realizes just how angry he is. Aline clasps him on the shoulder with an understanding look.

He finds Magnus and Izzy at the door, ready to go. “Can you portal us home?” he asks Magnus as they step outside.

Magnus wordlessly opens a portal and steps through without checking that Alec is following him, a testimony of how unsettled he still is. Alec takes the time to hug Izzy before he goes through. “You were amazing,” she slips him, kissing him on the cheek.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he answers. “Thanks for your help.”

Alec comes behind Magnus and embraces him as soon as he’s out of the portal. Magnus took them straight to their bedroom, but he hasn’t moved since, standing there trembling in rage — or in something else.

“I love you,” Alec murmurs over and over in his ear. “All of you.”

After a minute, the shaking subsides, and Alec feels his own anger drain with it. It leaves him tired and out of sorts, his head still ringing with the noise of the reception. He loosens his hold on Magnus and takes one hand off of him to pull off his tie.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus murmurs. “I really wanted to avoid making a scene.”

Alec moves to face him. “Don’t ever apologize for something a bigot caused. It wasn’t you.”

“I tried to just ignore him, but—”

“He was awful,” Alec finishes. “I know.”

“I don’t know why I let him get to me so much,” Magnus sighs.

Alec guides them both to sit down on the bed.

“You love Kara,” he says. “He was saying horrible things.”

Magnus shakes his head. “I didn’t even know that was her father.”

Alec shrugs. “We all get triggered sometimes. He just pushed the wrong buttons.”

Magnus curls up and buries his hands in his still colored hair. “I usually have better control than that,” he says.

“I think I know what happened,” Alec sighs. “You were feeling insecure because you toned down your whole identity for me, in a place where you don’t feel safe. You were already on edge, and probably dysphoric, am I wrong?”

“No,” Magnus mutters. “I hate slacks.”

“Magnus, I don’t want you to change yourself for me, ever,” Alec says. He puts a hand on Magnus’ shoulder, to make sure that he’s really listening. Magnus looks up at him. “I don’t want you to make yourself smaller or more acceptable because you think it will be better for me.”

“I just—” Magnus sighs. “It was your day.”

“We’re not, ever, going to be normal. Not for the Downworld, and definitely not for the Clave. And I don’t want us to be, Magnus. I’ve spent enough time trying to make myself fit into a mold that didn’t fit me. I don’t ever want you to tone yourself done for them.”

“Okay,” Magnus murmurs, his voice fragile. Alec feels a strong pulse of anger at Svec course through him again, seeing Magnus so vulnerable. Magnus isn’t supposed to be vulnerable. Not about this.

Or maybe he’s more insecure about it than Alec realized.

Alec holds him for a while in silence, feeling Magnus’ need to recoup. “How did you know I was feeling dysphoric?” Magnus asks suddenly, after a few minutes.

“I’m starting to recognize it,” Alec shrugs. “Also, you might want to look at a mirror.”

Before he can realize it, Magnus is out of his embrace, staring at a hastily conjured hand mirror. “Fuck,” he mutters, showing Alec that his suspicion was right. Magnus didn’t realize the way his magic responded to his discomfort.

“Did I just come out to the entire Council because I was angry?”

“Uh,” Alec hesitates. “I doubt that many of them know what the colors mean. They’ll just put it down as one of your...eccentricities. Izzy might know, though.”

“That’s why she kept saying she loved me,” Magnus breathes out, running a hand through his colorful hair.

“Should I be jealous?” Alec raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t know, Alexander. I’ve been thinking of leaving you for Isabelle’s legendary cooking skills.”

Alec makes a face at him, then he reaches out and touches the tip of Magnus’ artfully styled hair where it’s dyed bright yellow. “I like this look on you,” he says. “I mean, I don’t like that you felt so threatened that your magic reacted this way, but I like to see you proud and loud. You’re beautiful.”

Magnus beams at him and relaxes back against Alec’s chest, holding up the mirror to look at the both of them, Alec straight-backed in his serious black suit and Magnus boneless against him, a flurry of colors. Alec wonders, often — especially on days like today — if they could make a more disparate couple, at least in the eyes of the world.

And yet the ways in which they fit together outweigh their differences, every day.

+1.

“I asked you here because I want to show you something,” Alec says when Magnus walks into his office on a Friday afternoon, holding his phone in his hand and looking confused.

Magnus stills at his seriousness. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all. The opposite, actually. But it’s important to me, and I thought you’d want to see it.”

Alec takes a thin blue folder from his desk and hands it over to Magnus, a small smile on his lips. Magnus opens it with a frown.

“What is this?” he asks.

“The ruling from the latest Council meeting,” Alec answers. “It came in just this afternoon.”

“The one they asked you to testify in?”

Alec confirms with a nod. He didn’t tell Magnus exactly why he needed to talk at the Council assembly, but it’s a common enough occurrence that Magnus didn’t think much of it. To Alec, though, it was a moment he’s waited for for a long time.

He watches Magnus skim the first lines of the ruling, his eyebrows shooting up. “Is that what I think it is?” Magnus asks, glancing up at him.

Alec’s fingers find his wedding ring and start spinning it. “Depends what you’re thinking,” he shrugs, trying to look unconcerned. He probably shouldn’t be anxious about Magnus’ reaction, but he is. “It’s the first part of a set of amendments to Clave law that I’ve been pushing for since before I was named Inquisitor. Aline and I presented them to the Council last month, and they’ve just been voted.”

“You and Aline,” Magnus says pensively. “‘Amendments concerning the inclusion of members of the LGBTQUIA+ community,’” he reads out loud. “You did this?”

“Full marriage equality regardless of gender, including for mixed-species couples,” Alec recites. “Automatic acceptance of name and gender change requests if related to transition. Recognition of the existence of genders outside the binary.”

Magnus gasps in surprise. Alec nods to confirm the truth of it. It’s one of the things the Council fought back the most on, and he pushed hard to get it to pass. It goes beyond even mundane progress in every country he’s looked up, but it was too important to let go.

“Anti-discrimination policies,” he continues. “And this one might affect us directly someday: equal rights to adoption and the use of surrogates.”

Magnus’ eyes light up briefly, though he doesn’t immediately comment. Alec wrings his hands and rambles on nervously. “We didn’t manage to get the legalization of polyamorous marriages, but we’ll keep working on it. We’re preparing a second proposal on Downworlder inclusion, but that one will probably make amendments to the Accords necessary, and that will take a lot more time.”

“Alexander,” Magnus says in a low voice. Alec almost keeps going, too nervous to stop, but there’s something almost dangerous in Magnus’ gaze.

“Yes?”

“You did all this?”

“Not on my own,” Alec shakes his head. “Aline wrote up most of the proposal, and we got as many queer Shadowhunters to come testify as possible. There aren’t a lot of trans Nephilim who are out, but it was important, especially since most of the people on the Council have little knowledge of these issues. Aline being Jia’s daughter probably helped a lot, and our wedding made a lot of noise around here.”

“No,” Magnus catches his wrist. “You did all this and you didn’t tell me anything? Not once?”

Alec deflates. “I, uh… I wasn’t sure it would go anywhere at first, and I know Clave politics can be a touchy subject for you. And then when we finally got the hearing, I kind of wanted to keep it a surprise? I didn’t want you to be disappointed if it didn’t work.”

He doesn’t understand Magnus’ reaction, or rather his lack of reaction. He’s been absurdly happy ever since Aline came by his office earlier this afternoon to bring him the ruling, and he thought Magnus would share his mood once he found out. But he seems pensive instead, like this doesn’t interest him all that much.

“What about you, Alexander?” he asks. “What if it hadn’t worked?”

“We would have kept trying,” Alec shrugs. “Like the last four times we submitted the proposal.”

Magnus blinks. “Four times?”

“The first time, it didn’t even make it past Jia’s office. She’s supportive, but it was shortly after she was elected, and she couldn’t afford the waves it would make when there were still so many Circle supporters around.” Alec consciously stops himself from talking and stills his hands, clasping them behind his back. “Magnus—”

“Yes?” Magnus prompts him.

“Are you angry I didn’t tell you?”

Magnus’ eyes widen in surprise. “No, Alexander, of course not. I’m just—overwhelmed, I suppose. I’m sorry I made you think that.”

“Then what is it? I thought you’d like it.”

Magnus looks away, biting his lip. “I do,” he says. “I—what you’ve accomplished is incredible. It’s going to change—everything—for some people, and that’s amazing. And I know that you didn’t do it for me, but—”

“You’ll be able to get the gender mentioned on your Idris ID changed or removed,” Alec finishes for him. “And anything else you want. I did do it for you, Magnus. Not just you, but for you, too.”

“I’m not a Shadowhunter,” Magnus says.

“You live here, now. This will apply to every Downworlder in Idris, too.”

Magnus works his jaw. “I’m having a hard time processing it,” he admits. “It’s been so long that—to be able to have my whole identity recognized, in Idris of all places—it’s almost impossible to believe.”

Alec’s tension relaxes almost on its own. “You can take your time,” he smiles. “It will still be here tomorrow, and the day after. Are you...mad that I didn’t include you in the process?”

“Why didn’t you?” Magnus frowns.

“I figured you had other things on your mind, with all the work you’re doing to get more Downworlders to move here. And it felt like...like something we should achieve on our own, somehow? I don’t know if that makes sense. Aline and I discussed asking you for advice several times, but we felt like it should be our project.”

“It does make sense,” Magnus nods. “This isn’t just about changing the law. You’re trying to change the culture, your culture, and I’ll never be a part of that. I understand.”

“I don’t want you to feel excluded,” Alec says immediately.

“I don’t. I’m amazed at what you’ve achieved. And if the next step is a rewrite of the Accords, then I’ll back you every step of the way, and push for those changes in the Downworld communities too.” He reaches out to stroke Alec’s cheek tenderly. “I love you, Alexander. You still surprise me every day, and I love you so much for it.”

Alec feels his heart speed up at the declaration, a wave of warmth and love coursing through him, reaching for Magnus. He opens his arms, and Magnus comes to nestle his face in Alec’s neck, hugging him tightly. “I love you too,” Alec says. “It would mean everything to me if we can take this next step in tandem. Change the world together.”

Magnus moves to beam up at him. “You��re incredible, Alexander. You know that?”

“You keep telling me,” Alec smiles, leaning in to kiss him.

As they pull apart again, he can’t help admiring the way the light hits Magnus’ face just right, highlighting the golden sparkles in his blue eyeshadow. Magnus has made it a point to wear warlock blue everyday since they moved to Alicante, but today it’s subdued, down to just his makeup and a discreet sapphire bracelet. He tilts his head, and the light makes his eyes glow.

“When you said the amendment about adoption could affect us, did you mean it?” he asks.

Alec bites his lip. “I know we’ve only talked about children in a very abstract way, but—is that something you’d want?” he asks in a smaller voice than he’d like.

“I’ve never truly wanted it before I met you, but yes, I think I would,” Magnus answers, looking a little awestruck by his own realization.

“It’s not something we need to commit to right now,” Alec reassures him. “But now, if we want to, the Clave will fully recognize any child we adopt as ours, and as a legal resident of Idris.”

“All thanks to you,” Magnus murmurs, tears in his eyes. “Yes, Alexander, I want children with you.”

“Then we’ll start thinking about that,” Alec says with a wide smile. “For now, let’s go home and celebrate properly.”

Magnus laughs wetly and twists his hand to make a portal. “After you,” he says.

Alec grabs his hand and pulls them through together.

#shadowhunters #malec #malec fic #alec lightwood #magnus bane #shadowhunters fic #mine #echo's fanfiction #map out a world #autistic alec lightwood #asexual alec lightwood #nonbinary magnus bane #malec discord server #hmdiscord

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cassandra1447 · 4 years ago

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Lucifer 5A Thoughts

Lucifer season 4 was great. It had a nice solid plotline, it had great character development for pretty much everyone, I actually thought the Eve-Lucifer-Chloe triangle was done both purposefully and realistically with reasons why all three of them acted as they did, and just generally felt like a breath of fresh air after the mishmash that was season 3.

I had few complaints - a few but not many.

I was super hopeful about season 5. Guess what I binge-watched this past weekend?

Me:

Cue rant (under cut b/c there are spoilers aplenty and if you liked this season - please keep scrolling)

To be fair: I have only watched season 5 once.

Unfortunately, I have no desire to watch it again.

First of all, the lack of creativity.

Maze betrays Lucifer (again for like the 10000th time)

Michael being a jerkass - I’ll grant them his fear mojo, but could you have reached for any other concept than Lucifer vs. Michael? Or give him something more interesting than an ego-problem to fuel his evilness?

Ella’s boyfriend - look, there’s foreshadowing and there’s eye-rolling, damn it really, this guy is clearly only here to serve a plot point and he’s either going to be the victim or the murderer

Ella deserves a genuine good person and good relationship - WTF did you have to do that to her? There’s no point besides hurting her

It would have been better - and more surprising - if he had been a truly decent person even if the relationship ended up not enduring

And then there’s Chloe...and oh dear...

“Being a gift” consternation

Okay, yes Chloe is allowed to be upset and to be struggling with the divine side of things - in fact, I actually liked how they depicted that in Season 4

But in Season 4, when Chloe’s reactions hurt Lucifer, there’s a clear consequence. It’s part of why he turned to Eve, and there are a couple of excellent moments - the part where he confronts Chloe about neither being an angel like she wants or the devil like Eve wants for instance - that showed Lucifer was coming to understand himself and to stand up for his own sense of self to a degree

This time round, we get a lot from Chloe but little from Lucifer aside from him desperately wanting to be with her and willing to do just about whatever she wants to have that

And unfortunately, whereas by the end of season 4, we definitely get Chloe seeing past the divine bombshells and remembering that she cares about Lucifer for himself - that progress is completely nullified by the “you’re a miracle” bombshell and I didn’t need to see that again

Also - WTF does Amenadiel’s spiel to Chloe about seeing Lucifer truly work on her anxiety over being made for Lucifer? Did I miss something? Chloe’s upset over this seemed to me to be because of a lack of free will - not that she didn’t know who Lucifer was. Why - when free will is such a major deal for Lucifer - was that not discussed? Why did no one - Lucifer for example - come out and say “Humans have free will. Period. You can choose to walk away from me or tell me to go, and I will. I don’t give a damn what my Father did or wants or intends. It’s your choice.”

The “I love you”

I do not get why Chloe doesn’t know if Lucifer loves her. He may have not used the three words but he literally told her the prophecy (his first love) was about her not Eve. Or what about “I would do it again”? Or any of the many actions through which he’s demonstrated that he cares about her, that he values her, that he loves her.

And okay, maybe she needs those three words to be 100%, absolutely sure, okay. Then just ask him. How do you feel about me? What do you want from this relationship? Where is this going? You know, normal adult questions.

I’m not expecting Chloe to do emotional labor for Lucifer but if she needs something from him, she needs to ask him. I think that’s fair.

It also highlights a problem with Chloe’s empathy for Lucifer IMO - it feels like she’s once again so caught up in her emotional turmoil, she’s incapable of even seeing his. This is someone who literally just returned from thousands of years in hell, who has a family had cast him out and treated him like the worst, has been vilified by humanity for millennia, and because of all of this has a low sense of self-worth and has come to believe that he’s a monster - love is something Lucifer literally hasn’t been shown in millions (billions?) and until very recently hasn’t been in a position to express love in return - and you expect him to drop an “I love you” nonchalantly?

Again, it’s okay to have Chloe focus on her emotions rather than Lucifer’s. But if I say something hurtful to someone - even if I’m under duress - it’s still hurtful. I still owe them an apology.

The “not in relationship” evasion

Despite the fact that Michael lying was such a key factor in Chloe knowing he wasn’t Lucifer and Chloe clinging to the fact Lucifer doesn’t, Chloe doesn’t seem to make the connection that telling the truth to Lucifer is essential

One unaddressed factor from last season - Chloe lied to Lucifer and allowed him to think that everything was fine and that she wanted a relationship with him...and then on what he happily thought was a date almost roofied him (at minimum, who knows what was really in that vial). Lucifer subsequently found out about the plan - so there’s a historical basis for her to lie to him about how she feels (in order to betray him) - Chloe, he already thinks he’s unworthy of you, he’s already used to people he loves hurting him - you need to be straightforward with him

This includes not evading (or lying) about being in a relationship with him.

At least she does eventually tell Lucifer she needs time & space I suppose

Mojo switching

Why? Just why? It happened and then it stopped. What?

Various other characters:

Linda:

Why did we only have like 2 therapy sessions? Why did Linda not get to do her job this season? Her sessions with Lucifer did help him grow - why the hell didn’t she help Lucifer & Chloe work through some of their issues

I don’t like having her plot this season revolve around children. It’s a personal thing I know - but it’s such a default plot device to use with female characters.

Amenadiel

IDK about the timing of filming for this season but it felt really off-key to have a black man depicted as thinking the best way to make the world safer for his son to be aggressively trying to work with the police. Season 4 had an episode that dealt with the endemic racism in our justice system - why in the hell was that not carried into this season? Why don’t we see Amenadiel protesting or volunteering with a local group trying to address the systematic racism?

Where the hell did the “reflection” thing come from? I never saw Lucifer’s mojo as reflecting, more bringing to the surface what someone already felt/wanted/knew. And even if I buy that - Amenadiel never had people behaving as if he was reflecting love before. Oh and for Lucifer’s mojo, for it to have a visible impact, he generally has to be intending it to (except for when he’s in his devil form). There’s a few examples in earlier seasons where there’s an indication there’s a low level field continuously but nothing like what Amenadiel had happen in the convent. And doesn’t that give Amenadiel two powers (time + love mojo) while Lucifer and Michael only get mojo?

Maze

Oh look, Maze betrayals Lucifer again. Never seen that before.

1 freaking episode with Trixie!!! And it’s also the only episode with Lucifer & Trixie and Lucifer being adorable with Trixie and then - oh, it’s not that Trixie likes Lucifer, it’s that she’s being paid by Maze to get information (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

WTF does Maze believe Michael? He’s a lying liar who lies. I can’t believe Maze would be that stupid.

God

Just no.

Previous seasons seemed to be having the message that God isn’t responsible for your life, you are. Lucifer has a similar realization at the end of season 4. So why are you going to muck that up by making God an active participant???

Other things that bug me:

Lack of LGBTQ+ representation

The old-timey bit doesn’t count IMO - Lucifer gender-flipped characters at Trixie’s request so any LGBTQ+ moments aren’t genuine

Lucifer & Maze are attracted to men and women (no defined label - maybe bisexual or pansexual) but there are no moments where either of them actively show it (or someone of the same gender was obviously attracted to them); I think we get a single line about Lucifer having been with both men & women but that’s all I can recall

Is there a single non-hetero couple depicted on screen (that didn’t have to be gender-flipped)? Seriously. I’m asking.

Ella’s treatment

Already talked about this - but it was blatantly obvious the boyfriend plot served no purpose for Ella herself, just was a way to get this character looped in for other plot purposes

Chloe’s horrible advice to ignore Ella’s internal alarm bells. I don’t - how - what - yeah, feeds into what I said earlier about Chloe being too wrapped up in her own turmoil to be able to see from even a impartial (let alone another’s perspective)

Azrael! Why do you not use this sweetheart of an angel who has an established relationship with Ella? If you had to do this terrible Ella + bad guy plot, then for heaven’s sake, at least give us Azrael to warn Ella? Or something?

Lilith was good...but where is Eve? There’s not even a throwaway line of “Eve’s in Madagascar” or show some postcards she sent to Maze or have Lucifer check-in on her and say “Eve says hi” - does Eve still exist? It’s not like Eve understand about “being made for someone” and maybe help Chloe, right?

The Mock-Lucifer show episode -

if you have an episode in your show that’s parodying your show...it had better be because you work for a secret government agency and it’s being allowed b/c the government can claim anyone trying to blow the whistle got it from the TV show (Stargate fans out there?) - otherwise, no.

I know Lucifer likes to use the case-of-the-week to mirror what’s going on with Lucifer and the rest outside of the case - but this is too blatant, to the point it feels condescending

I didn’t actually want to know the story of Lucifer’s ring. Officially at least. Leave me some mysteries please, something to speculate about with other fans, something to develop headcanons for, something to write fanfic about - the story itself was fine, but doesn’t seem necessary

Hell Repercussions

Despite Michael using it as an excuse why “Lucifer” was behaving weirdly, once Lucifer is back, there’s little to no indication of the impact Hell had on Lucifer - thousands of years, and he’s pretty much the same as the moment he left Earth

Could have had Lucifer regress somewhat because he no longer had any support structure, was among literal demons who aren’t good for socialization, and perhaps had to revert to a more violent and vicious version of himself

Could have had Lucifer return to being more hedonistic - which would have been a good point of tension with Chloe - because he was starved of anything good in hell and is now trying to soak in as much life as possible (music, drink, drugs, parties, maybe flirting/dancing)?

One thing I did like was Lucifer talking to a human in hell - could have done something with Lucifer trying to help humans who felt guilty for things which shouldn’t qualify for eternal torment - connecting with semi-decent humans in hell b/c he couldn’t go back to Earth and b/c he has more empathy for them now (although I would argue Lucifer has always been kinder towards humans than other angels - look at the very first episode and how he treated Deliah)

Did no one try to contact Lucifer in hell? Amenadiel could have visited, he could have brought letters or messages from the humans in the know...did no one think of that? To help ease Lucifer’s isolation even in the smallest way? It felt like - as soon as Lucifer left - everyone was just like ‘well, he’s in Hell now, that’s too bad.’

What I did like:

Dan

He’s struggling and he knows it, and he’s trying to be a better version of himself while knowing he’s deeply flawed

The scenes with Dan & Lucifer working a case together are some of my favorites

While I do wish he had recognized Michael’s ploy - in light of his history of doing something morally questionable “for the greater good” and his current self-examination - his reaction makes sense to me. He’s terrified and he reacts very honestly and directly; I think Lucifer would far prefer Dan’s reaction of just shooting him to Chloe’s reaction that involved her lying to him and allowing him hope only to learn she planned on using his feelings for her to allow her to get close enough to use the poison (and send him back to hell).

Lucifer & Trixie - loved it (up until the elevator scene at the end)

Lucifer’s very practical solution of marking Michael so they couldn’t be confused - brutal yes, but practical

This turned out way longer than I thought it would. I could be wrong - I did only see it once so it’s entirely possible I’ve missed something or don’t remember something - and I know we’ve got more episodes to come that may improve the season.

But compared to season 4 which had a tight plot that worked in concert with the character arcs, my initial impression of season 5 is overwhelming disappointment. I expected better than I got.

#lucifer #season 5 spoilers #this is rant-y y'all #I didn't like season 5 #it had some good moments #but IDK WTH happened between season 4 & 5 #netflix you have betrayed me #I thought you were my savior

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latter-day-saint-nick · 5 years ago

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Here‘s a list of all the books with queer protagonists I’ve read this year. While I do actively seek those out, there are several books on here that I didn’t know had queer themes when I picked them up from the library and then I was pleasantly surprised by lesbians. I‘ll avoid spoilers except when discussing trigger warnings.

Kaleidoscope Song by Fox Benwell

Neo, a South African teenager, is obsessed with music of any kind. Her love of music brings her together with the singer of a local band and they have a passionate relationship that they must keep secret. The descriptions of Neo‘s life and her tendency to hear music in everything are beautiful and dynamic. The author included a list of the songs Neo is listening to throughout the book, so I was introduced to a lot of cool music from South Africa and other places. TW: Corrective rape and Bury Your Gays. This is a book by a queer (albeit white British, rather than black South African) author writing about a very real problem that exists within our communities, so it feels different to when a cishet author kills off a queer character just for shock value. I still can‘t help feeling that he could have made the same point without having the character die – just have her be injured. Still, I loved pretty much everything else about the book, so it gets a tentative recommendation from me.

The Mermaid’s Daughter by Ann Claycomb

25-year-old opera student Kathleen tries to cope with the constant pain in her feet, nightmares about having her tongue cut out, and desperate yearning for the sea. With the help of her girlfriend Harry she delves into her family history to uncover the secret of a curse spanning generations of women. What’s nice about this book is that Kathleen and Harry’s relationship is accepted by all their family and friends without question, so if you want to read a nice wlw fantasy story with no homophobia, this one’s for you. TW: Some discussion of suicide, but nothing too graphic.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

A teenage lesbian is sent to conversion therapy by her religious aunt. This is basically a coming-of-age story as the title character comes to terms with her identity and the death of her parents. It’s considered an important work of LGBT YA literature, so I really wanted to like it more than I did. Most of the first half of the novel deals with Cameron’s everyday life in her small town in Montana, which was, to be honest, rather boring to me. The pace of the story picks up a bit once she gets sent to conversion therapy, but even then it’s slower and less eventful than I would have liked. But since it is a popular book, that’s probably just me. I did like that the two best friends she makes at the therapy camp are a disabled girl and an indigenous boy, two types of people that are not often represented in queer fiction, so that’s something. TW: Conversion therapy and self-harm.

Proud by Juno Dawson

This is a collection of poems and stories about queerness aimed at a YA audience, and each one is a pure delight! These stories detail moments of joy and pride that make you feel happy and hopeful about being queer. They include a high school retelling of Pride and Prejudice with lesbians, a nonbinary kid and his D&D group on a quest to disrupt the gender binary at their school, a magical phoenix leading a Chinese girl to find love, and gay penguins. All stories, poems and illustrations are by queer writers and artists. Seriously, I cannot recommend this collection enough!

Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

An Irish magical realist story about three girls who perform a spell to find things that they have lost. The spell appears to have wider consequences than they expected, bringing to light things that should have stayed lost. This book has three narrators, two of whom are wlw. It treads a nice line between fantasy and reality, and has some pretty good plot twists. Also, there’s a crossword at the end, which is awesome. More books should come with crosswords.

Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

A space opera trilogy set in the distant future about the embodiment of a ship’s AI who seeks revenge against the ruler of a colonialist empire who destroyed her ship and killed her beloved captain. This is not beginner’s sci-fi, as it is very complex and intricate, but if you’re fine with a bit of a heavier read, you’ll be rewarded with some very interesting concepts. What makes this series queer is that the Raadch empire has no concept of gender and uses female pronouns for everyone. This makes every romantic relationship queer by default, whether we are aware of the characters’ sexes or not. I found it particularly enjoyable when Breq, the protagonist, tried to communicate in different languages that have gendered pronouns, which she had to navigate carefully in order not to offend people. She tries to look for outward clues of gender, such as hairstyles, chest size, facial hair or Adam’s apples, but even then often gets it wrong, because these things are not always consistent. That is just a great depiction of how arbitrary ideas of binary sexual characteristics tend to be. Also, I guess technically Breq is aroace, but since she’s not human, I’m not sure if she can be considered the best representation, though she is a very likeable character that I enjoyed following.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

These books are a lot of fun! They’re historical adventure stories with a bit of fantasy thrown in, featuring disaster bisexual Henry Montague, his snarky aroace sister Felicity and his best friend Percy whom he is secretly in love with. In the first book, the three teenagers are sent on a tour of Europe for various reasons, but they quickly abandon the planned route when they get embroiled in a plot involving theft and alchemy. The second book details Felicity’s further attempts to become a doctor, which leads her to reunite with an old friend and chase a tale of fantastical creatures.

The Spy with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke

Technically I read this one late last year, but whatever. I just wanted to put it on the list to have an excuse to talk about it. It’s about two Jewish siblings with magic powers who are recruited during World War II to take part in a secret project to fight the Nazis. Both siblings turn out to be queer: the brother is gay and demisexual, while the sister is bisexual, and they each have a love interest. This book is an independent prequel to The Girl with the Red Balloon, which takes place in East Berlin during the time of the Wall, and is just as good, albeit not as gay.

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia

This book tends to be classified as fantasy, because it takes place in an alternate, Latin-American-inspired world, with a distinct history, culture and religion, but there’s no magic at all, so I’m not sure it counts. But I digress. The country of Medio is built on classism and acute xenophobia. But by hiding her status as an illegal immigrant, Daniela, a girl from a poor background, manages to rise to the top of her class at her elite finishing school and become the first wife of one of the most powerful young men in the country. But her new comfortable status is threatened when she is pressured to join a group of rebels who fight for equality. At the same time, she also finds herself falling for her husband’s second wife. Obviously, this book’s political message is very topical, but beyond that, it’s just a very good story, with a well fleshed-out fictional world and great characters. This is the first in a series, with the sequel, We Unleash the Merciless Storm, coming out in February.

All Out: The No Longer Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages by Saundra Mitchell

A very nice collection of short stories about various queer teenagers in different historical settings, from a medieval monastery to an American suburb on New Year’s Eve in 1999. Most of the stories are realist, but there are a few ghosts and witches to be found in-between. What I found particularly notable about this book is that it featured several asexual characters, which you don’t often see in collections like this. I definitely recommend it.

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

This is a thoughtful, heart-warming life story about a woman growing up during the civil war in Nigeria. After Ijeoma, a Christian Igbo girl, is sent away from home, she finds her first love in Amina, a Muslim Hausa. Even after they are found out and separated, Ijeoma doesn’t quite understand what’s so shameful about their love. Still, as she grows older, she attempts to fit into a heteronormative society while also connecting with the things and people that make her happy. TW: Homophobic violence, including an attack on a gay nightclub. The novel makes up for this by having a remarkably happy ending.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

A young man in Victorian London finds a mysterious watch on his pillow, with no idea how it got there. This sets into motion a strange series of events, which leads him to a lonely Japanese watchmaker, to whom he finds himself increasingly drawn. This is an unusual novel that treads the line between historical fiction, fantasy and sci-fi. Most of the characters are morally grey and have complex motivations, but are still likable. I just really enjoy stories that take place in this time period, particularly when they are this thoughtfully written and don’t just take the prejudices of the past for granted.

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

A YA book about a transgender teenager, written by a transgender author. After her mother decides that she is not safe in her hometown anymore, high school senior Amanda moves in with her dad in a town where nobody knows her and she can try to go stealth. But even as she is making friends and experiencing romance for the first time, she constantly worries about what will happen if her secret comes out. It’s a fairly standard story about being transgender, really, but as it comes from a trans author, it feels a lot more personal and less voyeuristic than these stories tend to be when coming from a cisgender perspective. Amanda is a sympathetic and compelling character. TW: This book deals with a number of upsetting themes, including transphobic violence, being forcibly outed and suicide. There is a flashback to Amanda’s pre-transition suicide attempt, which I found particularly triggering. I also wish she could have come out on her own terms, instead of being outed in front of the whole school by someone she thought she could trust. It is still a pretty good book, but it can be very upsetting at times.

As I Descended by Robin Talley

A loose retelling of Macbeth that takes place in a boarding school in Virginia and involves two queer couples. The supernatural elements of the play are amplified in a wonderfully creepy way, and the characters are complex and realistic, so you understand their motivations, even when they do bad things. TW: Out of the five queer characters in the novel, three die, two of them by suicide.

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss and EG Keller

A charming picture book about the Vice President’s pet bunny who falls in love with another boy bunny and wants to hop around at his side for the rest of his life. This book was written as a screw you to Mike Pence, but even so it is a genuinely nice kid’s book that deals with homosexuality and marriage equality in a way that is appropriate for young children. The illustrations are incredibly cute as well.

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

A very strange, surreal tale about four people (most of whom are queer in some way) exploring a magical city that you can enter in your dreams by sleeping with someone who has been there before. I wanted to like this one more than I did, because I really love Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland books for children. But while some of the dreamlike imagery is cool and pretty, I found a lot of it weirdly uncomfortable, along with the frequent sex scenes.

The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein

15-year-old Julia is home for the summer at her parents’ ancestral mansion in Scotland and gets involved with a plot about theft, disappearance and possibly murder. She also has her first crushes – on a man working at her parents’ estate and a young Traveller girl, respectively. This is a prequel to Code Name Verity, which has the same protagonist, though her bisexuality isn’t really alluded to in that, which is why I’ve kept it off the list, even though it is an excellent book. The Pearl Thief is pretty good as well, though it is a bit strange to read after you’ve already read Verity and know that this carefree teenage character is going to grow up to be a spy in World War II and be tortured in a Nazi prison. Do read both books, though. They are great.

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson

A young scientist falls in love with the wife of the man she’s having an affair with. There’s speculation about quantum mechanics and interconnectedness, all wrapped in very poetic language. To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t get it, so I have no idea what any of it means. But at least the main character is bisexual and polyamorous (and possibly genderfluid – I’m not sure).

Queer Africa by Makhosazana Xaba and Karen Martin

A collection of short stories by queer African writers, discussing themes like love, sex, marriage, family and homophobia. The attitudes towards queerness in these different countries varies. In many of them, homosexuality is illegal, even though same-sex relationships used to be respected before the interference of Western colonialism. In any case, these stories are an interesting and oftentimes beautiful examination of queerness from a non-Western point of view, some joyous and some tragic. TW: The second to last story is about incest.

#books #LGBTQIA

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villa-kulla · 6 years ago

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so I saw Avengers Endgame last night, and honestly.....

I actually frickin’ LOVED it haha, I haven’t genuinely enjoyed one of the Avengers ensemble movies that much since the first one. Granted I’m still very sleep-deprived and on a slightly giddy high from how much it exceeded my expectations haha, and once I’ve thought more about it I’m sure I’ll find things to nitpick. But for the time being, I’m still pretty much swooning.

FULL INCOHERENT THOUGHTS/REACTIONS TO SPECIFIC THINGS BELOW THE CUT, AND OFC, ***SPOILERS*****

ONCE AGAIN: ******SPOILERS********

these are just my rambling Emotions about different moments, ostensibly in the order they occurred in the movie, but actually in the order I remember them:

The opening scene: that moment when Clint turned away from his daughter, and then turned back to see just a few remaining ashes floating slowly where she’d been was beautifully shot. Also beautiful: the soft gasp that went around the theatre right when it happened haha

Killing Thanos within the first 10 minutes and breaking the expected formula and thereby thrusting the movie out into unknown waters? lmao WELL PLAYED, ENDGAME <3

Steve picking up Sam’s mantle and running a support group for survivors? flawless move. My heart couldn’t take it

Okay first thing I genuinely didn’t like: “fat Thor” as a punchline. It was so cringey. My friends and I were discussing how that actually COULD have been so great had they explored Thor’s breakdown and PTSD in a meaningful way, and I mean who wouldn’t adore thicc Thor? But instead we got comedic zooms on his beer belly, and yeah. Kudos to Hemsworth for being a gem and making it work but yeah. Nothing wrong with Thor going to seed physically as well as mentally, just wish it hadn’t been played for laughs is all

Tony basically ripping his heart out and putting it in Steve’s hand? I knew my Vintage™ Stony feels were going to resurface and oh boy did they ever haha

Honestly their whole dynamic in the movies works very well if you imagine that they had angsty hate sex that wasn’t actually hate sex at all, and there was the possibility of real feelings there, but for whatever reason they just couldn’t. quite. make. it. work.

That moment with Antman and Hulk’s fans was so genuinely awkward and I could not stop laughing. Paul Rudd is a gift

It only took them 7 years to realize that all fans ever wanted was the Avengers lounging around in hoodies and eating takeout, but it felt all the more earned for it haha

this is silly but it was nice to have a return to Nat’s red hair...sort of lol

TIME HEIST! TIME HEIST! TIME HEIST! TIME HEIST!!

^^^ That was around when I really started settling in like ‘oh this is gonna be good’

the only spoiler I was exposed to was the ‘Steve’s ass finally gets the recognition it deserves’ post, and did it ever

got as close as we’ll get to canonically bi steve rogers and imma take it haha. Checking out your own ass? Legends only (in fact in our post-movie debrief over drinks, our first toast was ‘here’s to bisexual disaster steve rogers’ he time heisted my heart all over again)

and honestly props to them for going the cute nostalgic route by revisiting all the old movies like that, and not trying to be overly ‘dark and gritty’ for the whole thing. It was lovely how they did it, and very appropriate

The ‘Come and get your love’ credits from GotG is like the only concrete thing I even remember from that movie lol, and I was so giddy when it resurfaced

I’ll be honest, I’m so over aliens and space lol, any time one of these movies goes to space I’m basically yawning instantly, I’M JUST NOT INTO IT FOR THESE MOVIES SORRY. So I’m glad the space stuff was kept to a minimum in this haha. The way they do alien civilizations just never really packs a punch for me, with the single exception of...

......NEBULA MY LOVE <3 She was always the most intriguing and raw of any of the characters in those movies for me. Karen Gillan gives her an amazing presence, so I was glad to see her get a good showcase in this one

Oh hi Robert Redford, I definitely wasn’t reading Butch and Sundance fan fiction on the bus to work 12 hours before this movie asdjhgf haha that was a fun surprise

“Hail Hydra” ajshgd FUCKING EPIC OH MY GOD. I couldn’t breathe. That was amazing.

On a much less lighthearted note.......Natasha. Oh god. I really didn’t think they were going to go there with any of the original six but they did. Natasha was my original fave at the tender of 18, I was completely in awe of how Scarlett portrayed her, immediately cut my hair and dyed it red in tribute haha, and claimed her as my OG fave. I adored her, and still adore her. And honestly, I would have been so much more upset about her fate if...it hadn’t been so completely right for her. As much as I hate to say it, what she did was very character-appropriate for her, and really brought her full circle. And sneaky/unexpected to the end omg. That’s my girl. I’m a diehard Black Widow fan, and I think it’s safe to say she definitely wiped out the red in her ledger, if there ever was any left <3

.....that being said, really, no lingering zoom on a photo of her somewhere at the avengers compound? Nothing? The reaction immediately afterwards was well done, but it was kind of awks that it never came back with even a mention lol

Loved the way they did the ‘Guys...I think it worked’ emphasized only by the sound of birdsong. This movie killed it with the quieter moments

And now for something absolutely not quiet:

STEVE!!!

CAUGHT!!!!

THOR’S!!!!

HAMMER!!!!

I HAVE NEVER HEARD A THEATRE COLLECTIVELY LOSE THEIR SHIT LIKE THAT IN MY LIFE

I may have screamed. So. fucking. aces.

Between ‘Hail Hydra’, ‘That is America’s ass’, and lifting the hammer, Steve really owned this movie didn’t he lol

that’s my boy <3

they may have turned steve’s last movie into an avengers movie, but man alive this avengers movie was pretty much steve’s show and he killed every second of it

I’m giddy just thinking about it

And speaking of giddy, everyone’s return.....normally the big final climactic battle scene tends to pale in comparison to nimbler action sequences that happened earlier, but I said giddy and I meant it. They really pulled out all the crown-pleasing stops in it, and it was impossible to nitpick, I had the biggest fucking smile on my face the whole time

AND OH MAN THAT ONE LITTLE MOMENT WITH DR. STRANGE. HOLDING UP ONE FINGER. WHAT A MOMENT. INCREDIBLE. JAW-DROPPING. VISIONARY. TRANSCENDAENT. UPLIFTING. MY HEART SOARED.

Until......THAT MOMENT

“I am Iron Man”

TONY

Oh god

Everyone speculated it would happen, but I didn’t actually think it would. IDK MAYBE I’M JUST NAIVE LOL.

I was actually kind of numb there for a while and I stayed numb until....

“Your dad liked cheeseburgers too”

Yeah there was no recovering after that lol, I was basically a wreck until the end from that moment on

Man...Tony Stark actually died....

As powerful as it was, I don’t really think they had to go there in order to bring the pathos? Idk I have mixed feelings about that choice lol, his big moment was epic but you know what else is epic? Going back to your log cabin to live with your family in peace lol. Idk I’m still not sure how I feel about their choice with that, but maybe it just hasn’t fully hit me yet

Sam as the new Captain America?? A-fucking-men

And this brings us to the ending

the controversial ending which is already causing its own civil war based on what I’ve seen so far haha. And for what my two cents are worth....

I loved it. That was a bold move and I really have to give them props for choosing something risky and unexpected as a conclusion.

That last shot was absolutely beautiful. The moment ‘It’s Been A Long, Long Time’ kicked in I think my breath caught. And that slow zoom in on the window to see Steve and Peggy dancing 11 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a close, and sealing it with a kiss? Gorgeous.

I’m honestly choked up again just thinking about it lol.

And although it’s a small thing, no end credits sequence?? That’s what we call true closure lol, and I think that was what really hammered in the fact that it’s really all over, folks <3

Yes there were some nit-pickable things, some things that could have been better, or came too little too late, and I can’t even BEGIN to wrap my head around the time-travel implications in the conclusion (and I’m not sure we’re supposed to haha). But they took approximately 9000 storylines and characters and managed to represent them in what was actually a genuinely emotional, thoughtful, and entertaining movie that managed to smash the expected formula and the gently pick it back up again to piece together a satisfying, crowd-pleasing, and soaring resolution. Yeah a good deal of the emotional-payoff was already built in what with audiences bringing their own 10-year journeys with these movies to the theatre, and part of my excitement about this movie is definitely tied into the overall pop culture phenomenon itself. But as a movie it exceeded all my expectations, and I’m very satisfied. Thanks, Marvel. It’s been a good run <3

#spoilers #avengers #avengers endgame #endgame spoilers #shares #MY THOUGHTS AND STUFF #and now i need to sleep lol #the movie finished at 10:30 and i had to work the next day but....we HAD to debrief after something like that lol #how could we not #so add another couple hours to a schoolnight outing WHY NOT #i managed a 4 hour catnap before i was up again to go to work #where i wasn't as dead as i thought i'd be #dead now though lol #but yeah i loved it #i went with 2 other diehard marvel fans and at the end we all turned to each other like #'......they pulled it off O':'#and they did <3 #good times

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yessoupy · 6 years ago

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yeah, i wasn’t done.

there’s ONE MORE ANGLE of this whole platone/symposium thing that really grinds my gears and instead of explaining it in my own words i’m just going to quote a passage at length. okay? okay. i’ll cut most of it for you. i have painstakingly typed this for you so i expect all you pearl-clutchers and scolds to read every word (and those of you who’ve messaged me for explanations and more information, this is for you as well). marilyn skinner is THE BEST and so here is the first part of the introduction of her text sexuality in greek and roman culture. anything bold is my emphasis and anything [in brackets] is my addition to loop us back to the Issue At Hand. (Also? This is a good explanation of why it matters what the ancients thought. This shit AFFECTS YOU.)

Lawyers have little time for Platonic love [and neither do the hand-wringing scolds who’ve graced my inbox who first heard of pederasty in the tags of another post and decided they knew everything about Plato’s Symposium]. In a trial in America that attracted nationwide media attention, however, one point of constitutional law turned on arguments involving pronouncements about sex by the fourth-century BCE philosopher Plato. Plaintiffs in Evans v. Romer, heard in a Colorado district court in October 1993, were attempting to invalidate an amendment to the Colorado state constitution, Amendment 2, approved by referendum a year before. This amendment prohibited public agencies, municipalities, and school districts from adopting laws or policies granting protected status on the basis of sexual orientation. Its opponents argued that putting gays, lesbians, and bisexuals at such specific disadvantage violated their right to equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because it did not serve legitimate government interests and placed unique burdens on their ability to participate equally in the political process. Plaintiffs also challenged it on First Amendment grounds, including violating violation of the prohibition against the establishment of religion. Since many Christian denominations take the position that homosexual acts are morally wrong without exception, Amendment 2, they alleged, was an intrusion of fundamentalist Christian bias against homosexuals into secular law.

Here is where Plato enters the courtroom. To refute the latter contention, the state called in John M. Finnis, a specialist in moral philosophy, as an expert witness. In an affidavit, Finnis asserted that condemnation of homosexual activity had its basis in natural-law theory, the notion that human morality is governed by inherent principles evident to reason, and was clearly articulated by the founders of the Western tradition of rational philosophy: “All three of the greatest Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, regarded homosexual conduct as intrinsically shameful, immoral, and indeed depraved or depraving” (Finnis 1994: 1054). Appearing for the plaintiffs, Martha Nussbaum, an authority on Greek philosophy, contested that claim. Finnis’s understanding of the Greek classical tradition was based on an erroneous reading of poorly translated texts [ahem], she maintained; there was no evidence that ancient philosophers considered same-sex erotic attachments immoral. Condemnation of such relationships “as a violation of natural law or the natural human good” was therefore “inherently theological” (Expert Witness Summary at 2, quoted by Clark 2000:4). By inference, then, it was an establishment of religion.

As an example of what she said were the misleadingly translated passages that had given Finnis the wrong impression, Nussbaum cited the 1926 Loeb Library version of Plato’s last treatise, the Laws. There, the philosopher several times appears to condemn same-sex copulation explicitly, at 636c and again at 836c and 841d, as “contrary to nature.” She testified, however, that the translator, R.G. Bury, had rendered the Greek in keeping with the shame and embarrassment about homosexuality commonly felt at that time, giving it a far more negative cast that was appropriate. In a subsequent article defending her testimony, Nussbaum explained that Plato repeatedly expresses fears about the threat posed to rational judgment by all the physical drives--hunger and thirst as well as sex. He focused on the dangers of same-sex relations in the Laws not because he viewed them as wrong, but because they were “especially powerful sources of passionate stimulation” (Nussbaum 1994: 1580). As for the statements that homosexuality is “contrary to nature,” that is, to the practices of the animal kingdom, Nussbaum noted that they occurred each time in imaginary public pronouncements and construed them as rhetorical devices for convincing the ordinary man. Appeals to animal nature would carry little weight with Plato himself because he would say that a rational being cannot be guided by the behavior of nonrational creatures (1994: 1576-7, 1631, 1633, 1639).

After Nussbaum had finished her direct testimony, Robert George [massive eyeroll], a political scientist from Princeton, was brought in on rebuttal. Ensuing controversy dealt with the correct translation of certain passages of Plato’s Laws and, in fact, upon the single word tolmema (“act of daring”) at 636c, which Nussbaum asserted was morally neutral and her opponent claimed to be pejorative. Both sides based their arguments for the meaning of the word upon the entry given in the most authoritative dictionary of ancient Greek, though they relied upon two different editions of the same dictionary. There is no need to go into all the philological technicalities, or all the courtroom charges and countercharges, whose repercussions continues on in print as fiercely argued follow-up discussions by participants appeared in academic and legal journals. Eventually, both the Colorado District and Supreme Courts found for the plaintiffs, and the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that Amendment 2 was unconstitutional.

None of the judicial opinions issued by the various courts cited evidence from Greek texts in making a determination. Nevertheless, the philosophical and ethical issues raised in the Amendment 2 case indicate that informed discussion of Greco-Roman sexual protocols has the potential to shed valuable new light on modern controversies about sexuality. What was unfortunate about Evans v. Romer, as observers have since pointed out, was that the actual courtroom exchanges focused narrowly on Plato’s attitude toward male-male copulation, which is, indeed, of a piece with his distrust of all forms of sexual pleasure, including that provided by heterosexual acts. His well-known insistence that sublimated homoerotic affect, divorced from physical expression, can be an impetus toward moral and intellectual good was not given any weight in testimony, despite the fact that “Platonic love,” as an ideal, is affirmed not only in his early dialogues the Phaedrus and the Symposium but also at Laws 837d, where it is stipulated that “the love belonging to virtue and desiring that a young man be as good as possible” should operate in his model state. ...

#plato #marilyn skinner #harry styles #alessandro michele #platone/symposium #symposium #laws #phaedrus #it's not like i LIKE plato #v much resent y'all making me do this #bc you don't remember that you know the word 'platonic'#and maybe you never learned where that came from???#this plato guy.

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tumblunni · 6 years ago

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I love Riku's character development so much seriously. He's like if some brave anime SOMEWHERE friggin EVENTUALLY wrote us a "jerkass rival gary archetype" who was actually only teasing u cos he has a big ol crush and suffers from internalized homophobia. Cos like seriously there's a fandom version of that for almost every damn "gary" out there, the straight equivelant is so fucking common that you cant expect people to not see it here too! Seriously the straight equivelant is often written really nasty and unhealthy too, how many times do we see the "bad boy" act downright abusive to his female love interest and there's not even any hint that he has a hidden mutual affection for her, or any damn reason she should care about him except 'he's sexy so its worth the abuse'? And they always fetishize the "bad boy" having so much power over her and being able to easily physically hurt her, and her being good is somehow a BAD THING and she's so 'naive and childlike' (ick!) And then there's the reverse with the anime tsundere thing where the female love interest is often LITERALLY SHOWN HITTING THE DUDE AND ITS SOMEHOW PLAYED FOR LAUGHS! And neither of these versions even have as much of a good reason for the love interest to be that way?? Like its just 'my life was hard so just put up with me making your life worse'. And the focus is all on the protagonist either magically changing them or them never changing and the protagonist was wrong to ever want an actual healthy relationship!

Seriously, Riku having a crush on Sora would be SO MUCH INFINATELY BETTER because its a story of that sort of rival -> villain -> best friend/love interest thing but without a single horrible cliche abusive relationship trope. Riku himself realizes he was wrong and works to redeem himself and if anything his problem is that he tries too hard to go it alone without Sora's help. And he completely ditches all of the cruel behaviours after his redemption, there's no attempt to say 'thats just who i am and i cant change'. And he's just written so well even during his villainy, its clearly established very early on that he cares A LOT about sora and his whole turn happened because he gave in to his baseless anxieties that sora was abandoning him/never really cared about him the same way. I mean seriously is it any wonder people found basis for a romantic reinterpretation of this??? ITD WORK SO DAMN WELL! Like its already a supposed-to-be-platonic version of this ENTIRE ARCHETYPICAL ROMANCE PLOT and also a REALLY WELL WRITTEN ONE! And it just happens to mesh with the series's main straight love interest story being Really Bad. Sorry! I love Kairi herself but wowww there is no chemistry between her and sora aside from like.. I guess the scene where they drew each other on the cave wall as kids and then finished it at the end of the first game? That was cute. But aside from that its like the writers took it for granted that we'd just believe they were in love because theyre The Boy And The Girl. Honestly as a kid i felt more that Kairi didnt recipricate Sora's feelings and was scared of losing him snd riku as friends cos they suddenly started seeing her as a love interest and fighting over it. Basically Asexual Relateability Kairi took hold of my heart and now i can never let it go! Tho i also do like fans who interpret the whole love triangle as 'all three of them are in a polyamorous relationship and live happily ever after'. Look, just gimme anything but what we got in canon!!!

Anyway in summary i am proud that my boy went from "WAH I HATE SORA (but not really)" to "I WILL PROTECT SORA WITH MY LIFE HE IS MY GUIDING STAR (but platonically)" and i just wish they could perhaps canonize it someday. Like, even if they still wanna go endgame kairi could we maybe throw the fans a bone and canonize that riku is indeed gay/bisexual and does indeed have a crush on sora? Or, well, have any other canonical lgbt characters in the series, honestly. This series already has a frankly massive lgbt fandom!

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thedogsled · 7 years ago

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Hi guys. I’m going to cautiously title this ‘About Zimbio, Destiel, my personal struggle with the idea of wlw vs. mlm, and why what we achieved in the vote today says a lot about our magnificent fandom’.

This is a reminder in advance that I make generalizations but I don’t mean any harm by them. I’m happy to discuss this topic and capitulate on some things, because my experience of shows is extremely limited right now (unless I want to watch them in French). Just like Dean I say ‘we’ a lot but please assume sometimes I mean ‘I’, I by no means make any claim to speak for all of the following groups at any point: bisexuals, mlm shippers, wlw shippers, television executives, social media marketers, the mainstream audience, destiel shippers--etc, etc, you get the drift.) If any of the following upsets you, please let me know, it’s not my intent to cause any harm, only reassure my friends that they did a good job.

I promised I was going to write a post on this, because I’ve seen just a little mumbling and unhappiness that Destiel didn’t make it through in the semis. I get it, it’s only natural that it’s going to lead to some hurt feelings, but I wanted to really put across to you all why I say I was proud of us for our semi-final performance, rather than you just take it for granted.

We are an old fandom. Thirteen years is a long time; it makes Supernatural the longest single run fantasy/sci fi series on American TV (and I mean I think it’s unfair to compare it to non American shows like Doctor Who anyway just on pure numbers, especially since Who has gone through thirteen fourteen? fifteen? are we counting radio drama? actors in the lead role; it’s like a different show every time.) So. It’s had a superb run. Fantasy/sci fi shows are typically considered to be niche, not massive hits (comparatively speaking; SPN isn’t Grey’s Anatomy or NCIS I’ll grant). But what networks are finally waking up to is the power of the fandom of those ‘niche’ shows, dedicated viewing power which can grow a network’s brand, particularly online, and networks are eager to wrangle that.

This modern era of television is fandom’s era of television. Netflix are promoting gamification of television watching (even for kids) as well as choose your own adventure style TV. Binging and rewatching box sets is a whole thing now, not just the domain of the “geek”, and shows which can convince people to stick around and watch something instead of moving on when they run out of material--they’re the ones gaining success, while traditional shows slip further and further as they fail to capture new demographics. We’re making strong social media contracts with the creators and actors of our shows, and making it clear to them - in a way that is increasingly being recognized for the opportunity it represents - that there must be give and take with modern audiences, especially if you seek gratification through social media. (I read a great article I reblogged that called it the ‘Brandom’ effect.)

It’s wonderful, and it’s terrifying, because both fans and creators don’t know what to do with it. They can give fans too much power and the show goes off the rails, or deny it to them entirely, and earn only vitriol. Some shows rub their power right in the face of their fans and increasingly they pay for it. Some showrunners are outright incapable of talking to their fans at all without being respectful (I’m looking at you The 100), and some fans are ghastly, aggressive and outright disrespectful in pursuing what they want (it is a different thing showing joy over your ship as it is to dox actors and send their wives hate mail). Some showrunners, instead, are more embracing of their fans, like the Earpers, and if you want an idea of how actors should be engaging with fans, check out David Haydn Jones’ twitter. That man is a saint. It’s a delicate game of mutual respect, and occasional drama, and intent is the name of the game: do you have good intent, is it honest? People crave honesty on the internet where everything and everyone is fake--and that honestly is a tough thing to achieve when studios are too heavily concentrating on their bottom line.

So, this is a changing landscape, like I said, and people are struggling with new marketing techniques, trying to find their place in the world, running into walls when they realize that in fact they don’t understand their queer audience members. When something works, shows are very quick to jump right into it, almost relieved to have evidence that if they do X thing, their fans won’t all jump ship in horror, but here’s the thing, networks are in a lot of ways far slower to respond than shows. If you want to do something, you have to prove to the person holding the purse strings that it’s a profitable endeavor. Producers are set in their ways, especially old school producers, not realizing how quickly the landscape is changing, and writers are fighting against that all the time, because they’re often a lot more in touch with the creative fandoms they’re trying to inspire. Many have come from fandoms themselves. Queer writers should mean more queer storylines, right? But it means fighting money men to make it happen. Oftentimes that leads to the whole ‘one queer ship is enough’ standpoint, and when it comes down to it, those money men are more likely to put stock in safe investments, in proven investments. Consequently, wlw is flourishing because it draws in audiences without losing them. It’s arguably less risky to make Alex Danvers gay than Castiel. It’s more PC, accepted by wider audiences, groundwork laid by Dark Angel and Buffy in my own recent memory. When good results come from featuring those kinds of ships, they appear increasingly on TV, and it’s AWESOME. There were 16 wlw ships in Zimbio March Madness, and 11 of them got through all the way to 8vs8. There were only 2 mlm ships in 8vs8, and 3 het ships. Internet fandom, passionate and social and dedicated? It speaks, and it says ‘More LGBT rep please’.

We’re in a transitional period. Changes are coming, but when you look at the big mlm ships of the last few years, you can see the uphill climb that’s still ahead of us. I spoke with our Hannigram and Johnlock friends last year about what their experience with this was like. (I haven’t spoken to Sterek folks, but I know there’s disappointment from that front too). Johnlock shippers are largely furious about how explicitly the finale no-homoed their ship when there was absolutely no reason to. Having watched the finale myself, I feel like they really went hard against shippers explicitly. Hannigram suffered too. I haven’t finished S3 even now, but what I recall of the conversation went like this: they’re together, but there was a kiss that didn’t make it to air, and then the show was cancelled. In any case, what I’m saying right here is that this is part of a pattern, a theme I’m struggling with, where mlm fans are dispirited and disappointed and feeling disrespected by the very mainstream shows they’re watching.

(Which isn’t, I’ll quickly note, that I’m saying the same isn’t true of wlw audiences. The last two ships in Zimbio this year are non canon ships, and the fans of both have been hurt by the shows they watch, but they still keep coming back and watching the show. Swanqueen is ending, but the pair have been consistently mirrored - dark and light - with the emotional journey of the show largely being made over the shared custody? I don’t know, they changed it every week while I was watching it of Emma’s son. Supercorp is clearly full of eye sex thanks to the actress’ chemistry (and McGrath is so gorgeous she’d have chemistry with a brick wall) and yet has been outright mocked by the show’s cast. If that sounds familiar to Destiel fans, I almost want to say that Supercorp have it worse; just as with Swanqueen, they’re often told simply to shut up because there's already wlw rep on the show.)

But where shows are willing to go there now, diminished risk is the key, especially as resale value of shows reflects multiple, competitive platforms constantly needing to purchase content to fill their airspace. Naked women, women kissing and women having sex - bisexual women who are explicitly still available to men - that sells, but as far as I can tell networks are struggling to sell the same narrative about mlm. Maybe that’s my perspective only, maybe that’s me watching the wrong shows (and not at all because I don’t enjoy looking at women’s bodies, I do, but variety is the spice of life) Look at the outright surprise last year when GOT gave us a beautiful, pus covered, full screen dick. GOT, of course, which is insulated because it is a Number One performer. I present to you, in terms of dicks on screen, American Gods, then. Neil Gaiman is my hero, selling the network on the premise that they could have his great stories if only they were willing to gleefully integrate peen on every episode. Or so I’m told. There’s a lot on my ‘to watch’ list that I haven’t got around to yet. I will tell you, of course, that mlm is out there, Evak were voted out against Supercorp in the quarter finals) but on a big show like Supernatural that risk is exceptional. That’s why when we talk about Destiel ‘going canon’, we make the shockingly ambitious request of them HOLDING HANDS, or mutually saying ‘I love you’, and sometimes feel like expecting anything more, like a kiss, or god forbid a sex scene, is too much to ask. Why? When lesbians and bisexual women are presented on TV, kisses and sex scenes are a matter of course. In Alex’ coming out, in Thirteen’s coming out in House, Angela’s coming out in Bones - huge ensemble shows where main characters, all women, have come out and kissed (and returned to male partners in the case of the later two). (I should point out I am talking about genre “mainstream” shows in general, not for example Queer as Folk, where the primary aim is to explore sexuality, not fight dragons or solve crimes)

Now in addition to this problem, an issue that I’ve seen for years is that from inside the fandom world we are made to feel as though we are somehow obscene or inferior for shipping mlm ships, a projection that comes from the way mainstream folks will react to you if they happen to discover you drawing dudes together. Sometimes we hide our online selves from the real world out of shame that has only built over the years, where it’s considered that supporting mlm ships instead of wlw ships makes you fetishistic, or objectifying of gay men. I’ve seen it in fanfiction spaces and in rp spaces on dw and lj that shipping wlw has been raised to a point of being considered ‘more pure’. If you ‘claim’, they say, to be a queer woman, you should wholly be supporting wlw ships. When I started hearing this dialogue I was THIRTEEN. This was before Willow/Tara. There were just less wlw ships on tv, and there were less female characters whose autonomy didn’t depend on men, or portray them as being fragile, the weakness of their gender or whatever. There were standout female characters in my youth, absolutely, but they were all independent (mostly) straight women: Kathyrn Janeway, Sam Carter, Clarice Starling, Dana Scully. They kicked out against the system, the world they lived in, intelligent and defiant ladies I still idolize. Nowadays, though those wlw ships are available, and populated by so many beautiful, powerful, progressive female characters - and yes miraculously even strong female characters who still embrace their own womanhood. In contrast mlm ships are not keeping up because, in some way, I think that the ‘impurity’ of shipping mlm has stuck. I struggle to think of even straight non toxic male role models, nevermind male role models who are in engaging, romantic relationships with the same sex. This stagnation of masculinity (apart from the rise of the geek hero which often, as in the case of TBBT, doesn’t break away from inbuilt misogyny) troubles me immensely. (I’m not saying all male characters are awful, incidentally, but it’s not a positive message to outright expose the flaws of toxic masculinity without offering understanding, lessons, and growth. But that’s another essay.)

Trust me, I’m not saying everyone feels that TV is being stacked against mlm, but as a bisexual I really feel fractured by the whole thing. I feel like I’m supposed to loathe myself for shipping mlm, particularly when that mlm ship is ‘two white guys’. The fact that I as a woman enjoy male and female bodies is irrelevant, because one desire is pure, and one desire is fetishism. There is no balance. I’m allowed to be titilated by members of my own gender kissing each other and only that and heterosexuality. As a bisexual who is currently leaning toward wlw myself (sexuality existing on a sliding scale imo), it is the power imbalance in heterosexual couples which puts me off. It’s painfully true to life. I have a particular loathing for Booth and Brennan from Bones, for example, where his toxic masculinity is unilaterally forgiven because it’s true love, while Bones, once independent and stubborn herself, is increasingly nudged further out of character in order to forgive him his trespasses. But when I ship mlm, or write fanfic of my favorite couples, any power I give them is not based on their gender. The same I imagine is true of wlw. (An unfortunate consequence of this is people project it onto real life, where power inequality and abuse can exist regardless of make believe ‘purity’, and consequently people end up believing that something is wrong with them rather than their relationship, similar issues as people face when they imagine marriage is the goal, and everything else is happily ever after, because Disney told them so. In which case I advise you to rewatch Mary Poppins.)

During voting, I was reticent to address why voting for Destiel over the other ships was important to me. It was personal. (Of course anyone could have sent me an ask if they were curious). But why I was voting didn’t matter. It was enough that I was voting for the couple I love, whose relationship my blog is devoted to, and whose love story I hope is resolved. But there is more to it than that. What’s important, I guess, is how I feel about Dean. My reading of him is of a bisexual, still in the closet - perhaps even to himself - in his thirties. He made it out of high school, but that’s it, because he dropped out of higher education for family commitments. He likes rock music and classic cars. He loves pie, and dumb medical TV dramas, and cowboy hats, and riding rodeo bulls and chatting to strangers. He struggles with voicing his true self with people who know him, and might judge him in a way he will never come back from. Dean is basically me. I am all those things. And in this case, he’s in love with a genderfluid (has been both male and female) guardian angel whose love for Dean explicitly and singularly, has been described as a profound bond, and the greatest love story ever told. Castiel’s love for Dean, his willingness to do anything for him, is all I think any of us want from a romantic partner. And yes, we all find different things in our ships, and presumably other people connect with Destiel for reasons that aren’t the same as my own, but that’s okay. My reasons are my reasons.

And yet I am still thrown into that emotional disconnect: that because this couple is an mlm couple I’m wrong to ship it, that I would be better putting my energy into watching shows I don’t necessarily enjoy as much so I can find my representation in more respectable (or potentially less queerbaity) fandoms. That Supernatural isn’t good enough because I’ve been repeatedly told by people inside and outside the fandom that it isn’t good enough. I’ve got to tell you I agree that it struggles with being progressive. While season 3 of Grey’s Anatomy was showing the struggles of a pre-op mtf woman and her wife in an ep that made me actually cry for the dysphoria represented, on the other channel SPN had just got done killing a token ‘woman with an off screen girlfriend’ character. By season 11, we’ve had two gay male couples, both holding hands and leaning into each other to express their relationship. SPN is slow. Nobody in the world would deny that.

But to be quite honest, also, finding representation doesn’t have to mean ‘a ship’, it can just be a well written bisexual woman with a badge, and you aren’t restrained to just one rep either! In fact, the more the better. I find myself particularly starved for that rep, especially since - having been fetishized for my bisexuality irl before - I see painful reflections of that on television. That’s obviously going to be related to bad writing and TV’s particular way of objectifying women in general, too, but when a woman (say Angela Montenegro from Bones) has a two episodes storyline where she makes out with another insanely attractive actress, the music rising, lit with soft shades, the camera focused in on their mouth--before the plot is forgotten entirely, it is incredibly difficult not to see that as objectification and not bisexual solidarity. I want more mlm on TV because I want more bisexuals of both genders on TV, and because of the harmful insinuation in mainstream thought that a guy who comes out as bi late has somehow been lying to himself and was gay all along, while women who are bi are just exploring their sexuality and somehow more up for it. Those views need to be constantly, constantly challenged, because, honestly, people believe them. (Probably not me or you, but it’s out there).

(As an aside: mainstream is also harsh toward female writers who write mlm stories. There have understandably, as a result, been female writers who chose male pseudonyms to pen their gay romance novels. I first experienced this to a lesser extent back in Gundam Wing fandom, because if you were a ‘male’ author it legitimized you and people would read your stories in preference to those penned by girls. Back then it was a numbers game. The prejudice does remain. Audiences are sometimes outright cold to female authors who pen mlm stories! You need only look at the conversation about boycotting Love, Simon because it was written by a straight woman to appreciate just how deeply we’ve built this disconnect, as though to write something the author must always write from personal experience. If that’s the case, I feel terrible for Thomas Harris and Jeff Lindsay, and JK Rowling (who speaks about choosing her moniker because it was genderless) must certainly have had an exciting childhood, what with all the magic and dragons.

As a result I think we (or at least I) have internalized some harmful things about who has the right to interpret themselves in stories told about men, or male protagonists. And in lashing back at girls who for years have been doing just that, considering it to be lesser if I find a role model in Dean instead of Angela, we have harmed the integrity of mlm fans themselves, who increasingly struggle under a burden of self imposed guilt. It is reflecting back poorly on mlm performances, even as wlw stories flourish. In this raising the pedestal of wlw purity, the ‘ethical’ alternative, we dismiss what people can learn about themselves from male role models too, something that we instead encourage if it’s a teenage boy finding a role model in Elsa. My closeted bi self loving Dean Winchester harms nobody, but I am still made to feel lesser for doing so, even if sometimes that feeling is ridiculously self imposed. Hell, maybe I’m alone in this feeling and the rest of this is bullshit, but that’s why I said ‘I vs we’ was definitely a part of this commentary.

In any case, this is what I think this means to the Zimbio vote: As wlw rep has been increasing, mlm has been facing a disappointing deficit. Those once big fandom movers ‘Superwholock’, the Hannigrams, the Sterek shippers--have fractured and splintered off. Destiel has come in waves but it’s still somehow here, without its original opponents from back in the day. It’s here, even with setbacks after season 8 and 10 that had fans breaking away from Supernatural entirely. Optimism now reflects optimism felt before, but let’s face it Castiel was killed permanently at one point, and Bob Singer said outright, even just a few years ago, that Destiel and social media stuff just didn’t come up in the writing room (pr is not showrunning, etc). People are hugely entitled to struggle with optimism for non canon mlm ships because history repeats itself. Add into that feelings like I described above, and the struggle is real. It can sometimes feel like you’re fandom’s three legged, one eyed donkey.

Add to that how old Destiel is. Every fandom coming into existence now, every ship built around, comes into contact with Destiel at some point. If you type ‘queerbaiting’ into Wikipedia, our ship is cited. In Google, we come up first. Thanks to antis (and some genuinely bad behavior from bad apple shippers over the years) we’ve earned a reputation, and it moves before us into every ship interaction we have. Because of that, we can appear both intimidating and as something to be avoided, because ‘what if you meet a crazy one’? You’d think seniority would be a good thing, but few people see us as a ship that’s been there and done that, as they do Swanqueen. We aren’t the ship that can perhaps offer advice on things going on in whippersnapper fandoms based on our experiences, as it would be in an ideal world. We’re not a ship to be aligned with, and because of this odd perception of wlw vs. mlm, there was simply never any potential that support for Supercorp wasn’t going to skyrocket. It was a fight against ‘That monolithic mlm ship that just won’t stop’, as it were, because here we still are hanging onto threads hoping our ship will go canon, and based on past evidence, the fall of other mlm ships, and only looking in from the outside, that seems like wishful thinking.

So we were unlikely to gain allies from heartbroken mlm fandoms. We were unlikely to find allies in wlw fandoms. It’s sad, of course, because for all the talk of representation in media, the desire to express a balance and cheerlead for mlm, imo an obvious representation underdog, simply doesn’t ever come up. Our friends and relatives roll our eyes at us if we talk about Destiel because we get that ridiculous light in our eyes when we do. Ultimately, that meant that Destiel was on its own. It had to unify. It had to pour its passion into voting and be a family again. It’s been knocked out in previous years - honestly based on what I’ve heard it’s been a disaster - but THIS YEAR we pulled out all the stops. That was all us. Despite antivoting, Destiel shippers - and only Destiel shippers - fought and fought - thousands of votes after thousands of votes, as we made small leads only to slip three times further. We didn’t stop. We were there and fighting right up until the end. And it may just have been a silly online poll, but I think it really goes to show what we can do when we put our hearts into it. We more than doubled the amount of votes cast in the previous round, over the exact same time scale, even though Supercorp fought back with everything they had, all the vibrancy of being a fresh, shunned ship determined to prove themselves, using social media strategy and unity to bring in votes from wherever they could get them. They fought well. They were wiley and smart, and so passionate; passionate like I thought I’d forgotten how to be.

And we kept fighting. We were in the semis, with twice as many votes more than Swanqueen, and we fought tooth and nail and almost got there, slipping just in the last half hour.

I have to believe that that’s because some people in the Destiel family have hope. I know we’ve drawn in a lot of new and returning shippers recently, I’ve seen you following me and starting out in meta writing yourselves, joining Destiel exchanges for the first time, sharing your first codas. The DCBB and Pinefest have had ENORMOUS turnouts. We are, despite all odds, growing as a ship again.

I really hope that we can overcome the shame that has somehow been drummed into us for shipping mlm. I hope that we can all, whether we ship wlw, mlm, het or poly or whatever peeps are doing these days, make sure not to raise one as an ideal over the others, because it’s not in the spirit of family, of fandom. It is never ‘us against them’, it’s never a case of moral or ethical superiority, definitely not even in everyday parlance and least of all in a shipping popularity contest.

And maybe despite the risk, we’ll get an ‘I love you’, some hand holding. Hell, maybe even a kiss (Supernatural never even gave us a kiss between Jesse and Cesar, though, so I have my doubts.) But God if that wouldn’t pave the way for better deconstruction of toxic masculinity on genre TV, more presence of bisexual men and gay men on genre TV, and more men kissing and open expression of sexuality on genre TV.

So here’s my final word. Maybe the bunnies will kiss. Maybe they’ll even do what bunnies do, who knows? And maybe next year we’ll win it.

I hope I didn’t step on any toes with this post. I felt like these words needed to come out of me, though, so here they are. Thank God there’s no more Zimbio until next year, right? Please refer back to my first paragraph for disclaimers. Thanks, though, if you read this far.

#zimbio #destiel #bisexuality #as i was writing this i was like wow i have issues #it felt good to talk about them #please feel free to disregard #shipping #multishipping #woes #personal #my bed is calling me #looooong post #dean is bisexual #what that means to me

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entamewitchlulu · 6 years ago

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Homura’s Flash Reviews [Spring 2018]

It’s the end of another animu season, so it’s time to give some flash reviews for the stuff I ended up finishing this season!

Under the cut for the length + all the gifs lol

Comic Girls

After having storyboard after storyboard rejected, young aspiring manga artist Kaoruko moves to a dorm specifically for young mangaka, where she makes new friends, has fun adventures, and learns a lot about herself and her craft.

I liked this show way more than I expected to; it’s a very moeblob show and especially in the first couple of episodes there’s a lot of anime bullshit. It IS a gag anime at the start and tends to default to a lot of the same tropes. Despite this, I found it ridiculously hilarious, and I could relate to a lot of the #ArtistProblems and other things the girls dealt with regularly. Not to mention, the characters were generally just really fun, cute personalities. Despite some frustrations with some general character arcs feeling a bit stagnant, there were actually multiple places where I physically cried because despite the gag manga start, it gets pretty emotional later on regarding things like anxiety, artist’s block, and the feeling of stagnation, which was super relatable. Also....Kaoruko is absolutely a tiny lesbian and I love my tiny lesbian daughter. Actually I’m pretty sure they’re all lesbians, except for Rukki who is probably bisexual.

overall: 7/10

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card

Following the events of the original Cardcaptors, Sakura wakes up one morning to find that all of her Sakura Cards have turned clear. Not only that, but there are more, strange new spirits appearing, and she’s been granted a brand new key from a dream.

Okay so....I have made mention of this one from a few other flash reviews since the first cour took place during last season. And...my opinion has honestly worsened. This was 22 episodes of obnoxiously boring fluff and little else. Don’t get me wrong: I love fluff. But I watch specific things for fluff. I don’t watch magical girl shows for 95% fluff, I watch them for sparkly, magical girl bullshit, cute costumes, fun magical experiences, and maybe just a little bit of worldbuilding. Clear Card gave me next to nothing on all fronts. When it wasn’t trying to be Cardcaptor Sakura: The Cooking Show, it was dragging its feet with 15 minutes of pointless chatter that did nothing to further characters or relationships, leaving them the exact same static characters they were in the original series. Syaoran’s greatest draw was nearly completely erased once he became just a sedentary background love interest who did little. At least as a rival he pushed Sakura, but here, he just enabled the boring writing that did nothing to push the envelope. The formula is nearly exactly the same as the last two series and the arc even mentions it. Characters are unnecessarily cryptic, hiding things from each other, which only drags the story down. The main plot is barely sprinkled in, magic stuff usually only happens for about 2 minutes towards the end of the mind-bogglingly slow fluff episodes, and the major plot?? Only appears for about five minutes in the final episode, addresses none of the questions we had and only reveals things we had already figured out fifteen episodes ago, gives no conclusion to any of it, and COMPLETELY ERASES THE ONLY CLIMATIC, STORY-FURTHERING SCENE BY USING TIME MAGIC.

And that’s...it, apparently. I see no indication of a second season. I assume the manga is still ongoing, but even if it is, this was an absolutely horrendous ending that did nothing to satisfyingly tie up ANY loose ends, further the world or the characters, or really do anything to add to the previous series. Even the costumes were few and far between and the cards were almost all the same as the last set. There was no creativity and nothing added here for the fans. That brings me to my ultimate complaint: who was this show even for?! It can’t still be for kids, because new young fans of the original demographic’s age group would not have any clue what was happening with these characters, and it’s just lore-based enough to confuse any new viewers. And it can’t be for the original fan group, who are all much older now and want something with just a little more substance. I’m not asking for a gritty cardcaptors show at all. Just something that respects us as adult viewers and gives us a little more to grab onto. And that was way longer than any flash review has any right to be, so I will cut myself off there.

overall: 4/10

Lostorage conflated WIXOSS

Though they believed it was finally over, former LRIG and Selector Kiyoi knows that the Selector battles will come again, and this time, they will destroy everything--and she is determined to bring the dark loop of suffering to a close once and for all by bringing together all of the greatest Selectors from every generation to take on the new threat.

Boasting the largest cast of any of the previous WIXOSS series and continuing both the story of Lostorage and the first two Selector series, this is absolutely the most ambitious take on the WIXOSS universe thus far: and it does fantastically with it. There was not a single moment where I was bored; even during slower flashback and exposition parts, I was hooked. This was one of the best ways to expand and complete the universe, as the ending here finally does feel like a decisive end to the anime franchise (though, so did the end of the Selector anime, so who knows lol).

As always, WIXOSS has some of the most fantastic character designs, relationships, dynamics, and animation among other anime, making it truly stand out. The card game is more window dressing than actual substance, but that doesn’t matter, because the power of the relationships and the messages that this story is telling are far more powerful and attention grabbing. The decision to make Kiyoi the protagonist of this series, while also bringing back previous protagonists Ruko and Suzuko, was an incredible decision and really made for a fantastic story.

overall: 9/10

Golden Kamuy

After being discharged from the army after the Japanese-Russo war, Sugimoto is left with the dying wish of his comrade: to make enough money to support his fallen comrade’s wife and son and pay for their medical expenses. He stumbles across an opportunity when an escaped convict tells him of a hidden trove of Ainu gold that can only be found by collecting the information tattooed onto the bodies of a group of escaped prisoners. With the help of an Ainu girl named Asirpa, whose tribe the gold was stolen from, Sugimoto takes on the mission to track down the prisoners and find the gold.

This show is absolutely fucking incredible. I don’t think I can even give it proper words. Like what a goddamn great season for anime this was?? Not only is the show clearly heavily researched, giving us insight into a part of Japanese history and Ainu culture that is rarely if ever discussed in Japanese culture, the story and characters are all so well done. The animation can be wonky in places, but the expressions, the character banter, and god the soundtrack are all mind-blowingly good. Unlike Clear Card, when this show decided it wanted to be a cooking show, I was completely on board, because I was learning something new about Ainu culture and also getting to see our heroes be adorkable and hilarious together. The characters are absolutely where this show shines, and even though it’s a bit bloated at first, characters quickly become recognizeable and easily separated. The relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa, especially, is one of the most wholesome and fun friendships I’ve ever witnessed (I’m hoping, tho, that it stays platonic despite some jokes to the contrary lol). This was only season 1, and season 2 will air in October, and you can bet I will be waiting at the edge of my seat for more of this incredible show.

overall: 9/10

Hinamatsuri

After a strange girl in a metal cocoon drops out of the sky and onto his head, yakuza Nitta finds himself the reluctant father of a needy young girl with psychic powers. Shenanigans ensue around their strange new family and the dysfunctional adults and children that surround them.

This show was so much fucking better than it had any right to be; from the initial plot summary I was worried it was going to be awful, creepy-ish moe bullshit...but it was NOT. This was a gag anime of the highest caliber. The pacing was amazing, the characters were to a one endearing, the animation was BEAUTIFUL, and god...the punchlines...everything was so fucking funny the whole time.

You’ve got pretty much everything here: you’ve got the obnoxiously needy Hina, who is monotone in everything she does, you’ve got the Worst/Best Dad Nitta, you’ve got poor can’t-say-no-to-favors Hitomi, and the Most Pure and Wholesome Anzu. There’s something to love in every character and every scene, and it’s ridiculous just how amazing this show is. I can’t put it into words, please just watch it. Where my other top shows of the season took awhile to grow on me, this one was hitting home runs from episode 1. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

overall: 9/10

Megalo Box

In a world where boxing is performed with powerful mechanical rigs known as Gear, a nameless boxer known only as Junk Dog is tired of being forced to throw fights in an illegal underground boxing ring to pad the pockets of his gambling organization. When he crosses paths with the current champion of Megalo Box, he and his crew take a risky gamble to get him into the world’s first international Megalo Box competition so that he can fight the champion again, reinventing himself as Gearless Joe as he steps into the ring without any Gear.

This show took a while to really get onto my Awesome List, mostly because the aesthetic that it’s throwing back to was never really my thing in the first place. I’m generally not a huge fan of the muted color palettes, the punkish music, or just the idea of boxing in general (a lack of significant female characters also always tends to put me off). Despite this, however, the show ended up being stunning. By halfway through, I was incredibly hooked on the high this show wanted me to ride, by the character arcs that were playing off each other, and I was even coming around to the music. Boxing may not be my thing, but the character story that was told here was an incredible one, and definitely deserves its place among the Best Anime of 2018, which if it doesn’t win something come that time, I’ll be floored and disappointed with everyone.

overall: 9/10

Overall this was an incredibly strong season: I dropped a few things of course, but what I continued were almost all 9/10s. I’m super pleased with the spring season and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s coming out for summer.

#comic girls #cardcaptor sakura clear card #lostorage conflated wixoss #golden kamuy #hinamatsuri #megalo box #homura's flash reviews #homura reviews

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superemeralds · 7 years ago

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my sonic characters: a masterpost

I’ll add more whenever i get new info on characters and so on sakjsak

I used to have more but i gave some of them away so i dont feel like i should mention them here (even if those designs are not in use anymore)

[edit 4/20/2019 (haha) added nexus and links to character tags]

1) Saph the hedgehog

This is Saph. He’s a 18/19 year old disaster gay trans boy.

I change his shoe design literally every single time i draw him. :)

I’ll go in depth about his past later.

Saph is pretty much all over the place and forgets to be considerate of other peoples feelings sometimes. He might come off as very egoistic of self centered, but he does actually care in his own kind of way (even when its. kinda bad bc he gives off wrong signals sometimes and ends up hurting people hes close to)

He’s looked up to Sonic ever since he was small and he collects all of the Sonic comics and video games. His dream is to meet Sonic and win against him in a fight.

Shadow is his big idol in many things so he tries to be edgy sometimes or act tough but he fails miserably most of the time and makes a fool of himself; which he doesn’t really mind because he can take a lot of things with humour (sometimes too much). He also uses white eye liner to imitate shadows marks, and he dyes some parts of his fur white to make the marks he already has extend to look more like shadows.

Shadow was the person that taught him how to control his chaos powers, because he’d always just weakened himself in the past, because he is super unstable. (If it wasnt for Shadow he probably would have died by now.) Shadow also was the one that told Saph to go to Tails for help with the buckles on his wrists and the rings on his ankles. They are made of a material similar to shadows rings (tails tried his best to replicate them) so they would help keep the energy in Saph balanced. Due to his strong affiliation to Chaos Energy, he could technically even turn super; but his body would be unable to hold the immense amount of energy and begin to literally burn down to ash within a few minutes.

He is very gay and in a relationship with Ezra.

He’s on T and has not yet had top op. (his bobbies smol its all muscle >:3€ )

Old pic of him and his bf as humans uwu

2) Red the hedgehog

Red is 25/26 years old and works at GUN as special agent. Sometimes he and Rouge get drunk in her club at night and joke about tearing that organization down (or maybe they are not joking)

he’s pansexual and horny 24/7. He has a girlfriend and is in an open relationship. hes polyam if you didnt guess it askdsajh

he’s blind in the right eye and has a tattoo of a star on his chest

(here’s his gijinka because i just. hes hot. he used to be the one character that had like 30 fangirls on deviantart and each of them would comment “nosebleed” every time i uploaded)

ANYWAYS

Saph and Red. They are brothers.

*WARNING: abusive parents, transphobia, homophobia, violence

When red was a young lad and Saph was still a baby their father snapped and beat Red up with an iron bar, making him blind on his right eye. Red took Saph and ran away from home.(Their mother died at saphs birth)

They lived and still live in a city a litte farther off Empire City.

Red decided to go to an orphanage because he could not possibly take care of an infant. (granted his dad couldnt either but it seemed the best possible solution)

They lived in the orphanage for a few years, but saph very soon showed sighns of being trans and got bullied by the other kids. they would call him gay and tr*nny and kick him until he fell silent to endure his “punishment”.

Red couldn’t take it and decided to run away with Saph again. They lived on the street for a while, but Red was caught by GUN for stealing. Once they found out he had a form of chaos powers (even if weak) they decided to let him slide and hire him as Special Agent.

Red accepted this and uses the money he ears to make sure Saph has a good life. This kinda spoiled Saph a little, but he also deserved it lets be real here.

Red made sure to enable saph to get education (which he totally refuses to acknowledge and take seriously) and physical transition.

*WARNING END*

3) Ellectra “Ellie” the tenrec

[ pardon me being inconsequent with the design omg ]

Ellie is a 20 year old functional asexual demiromantic lesbian who is not interested in dumb boys and would rather talk about science with a pretty girl.

She can manipulate electricity and is called “Daughter of Zeus” by the townsfolk in her home island called Coral Island, which is located near the windsmil isles in Apotos.

She studies archeology and gaia mythology/ancient history, which makes it very convenient that she lives nearby an actual gaia temple. (She wants to be like lara croft one day)

At the 2005 black arms invasion her mother got heavily wounded when she tried to protect the town from the aliens and died from the aftermath.

Ever since then Ellie hates Shadow with a burning passion and holds him responsible, because she believed the government propaganda (provided by GUN ofc) that Shadow is One Of The Aliens. If she was ever to meet him she would be FURIOUS and ready to murder (she knows he cant die though).

She tried not to focus too much on that and just. do her cool ancient stuff.

Here are her parents Chion and... the mother i had still not found a good name for.

5) Chion the tenrec

This gentleman is 40+ years old and proud father of Ellie.

Hes also a het ace.

Chion is greek for snow (as far as google translate goes) and he was named that bc of his white nose lmao. its like a snowflake on his black body.

He doesn’t have any elemental powers, but he is naturally very strong and will punch anyone who comes close to his family. He can also use swords and is a skilled swordsman.

He inherited an olive farm from his family and he does keep it going. He makes his money selling olive products he does make himself.

6) Athena the hedgehog

Athena was the daughter of the “major” of the island that the family lived on (coral island), so she was expected to become the new major once he had to retire.

Due to the location of the island and the geographical landmarks on it, many raiders (and also eggman) have great interest in the ruins and mythological places. Athena is not one to give in easily and defended her people and the island from many intruders.

She possessed a less particular (than Ellie), but still fierce power of lightning manipulation. Having used her powers excessively, she sustained severe damage to her arms which showed as lighting shaped scars. She showed them with pride, because they meant she had fought hard to get where she was now.

She was bisexual and married to a tenrec called Chion. She was a year older than him.

The rings Ellie wears on her wrists were her mom’s.

7) Frost the snow leopard

Frost is a 15 year old demiboy who really just wants to have a good time. He hasnt really given his sexuality much thought.

He lives in a small village in Holoska; hes actually even met the werehog. Well he saw him. but he was too afraid to talk to him because holy shit its Sonic The Hedgehog!!!!!!!

He has ice powers!!!!

His insides are like -18°C and he cant eat anything that is hot. He has to eat cooked meals when they are room temperature, or even cooled down to fridge temperatures ( about 6°C).

He basically lives off ice cream and dry meat (if they get fancy food from the city he gets frozen pizza) He thinks of going to the UF for college, but he doesnt really know what he wants to do with his life yet so hes just having fun snowboarding.

8) Mitzu the Cheetah

Mitzu is 22 years old and owns a flower shop/chao garden combo where she takes care of chao, while taking care of flowers and breeding them. Her hydrokinesis powers are very helpful in that!

She loves nature and the outdoors and feeling the grass under her feet, so she doesn’t wear shoes/socks. Ever.

She generally is very free spirited and optimistic!

Shes a big sapphic but shes also okay w being single atm.

Her chao are like children to her and she loves the chao that get left in the garden as much as her own. (ppl leave their chao there when they cant watch over them anymore or if they go for a vacation and cant take them with them or smth)

9) Dan the red panda*

Dan is 17 years old and a big homo.

He has no special powers, except being able to eat and sleep more than the average person.

He’s from a very rich family, but his parents insisted in him finding a wife to like. pass down the heritage but he aint having none of that so his punk ass ran away from home to be his gay self and study art.

He lives in a tree house a little off a small village in a more rural area in east UF, near station square. let the depression boy be happy...

10) Yoshi the siamese cat

Yoshi is a 20 year old enby kitty who wants to make the world a gayer place!

They are studying fashion design in hope to one day open their own fashion store for queer people! The clothes are made with body differences in mind and they also want to offer a free customization service to fit clothes to every single body type.

They don’t have any special powers as of now but i kinda want to give them a power that could be helpful with their goal Im still thinking about it ...

11) Joel “Spirit” the Husky

Spirit is fresh ripe 14 years old and Sonic the hedgehog is his big big idol. He wants to be JUST like him when he grows up.

It has come to my attention that he is basically the sonic universe Deku and I may or may not be planning to write a fanfiction for that...........

He doesn’t have any special offensive powers, but he has orange blood and he has the ability to read the Chaos Signature of anything he encounters. (called: Chaos Vision)

This means he will immediately know if a person he meets has super powers and he will also know what that power is. He can also guess the emotions of people because they are tied to the kind of chaos energy that surrounds a person.

12) Aurora the Husky

Spirit’s Sister!

Her name is Aurora and she also has Chaos Vision!

She was born blind, but she’s been able to see with her power, so that’s just what the world looks like to her: Darkness with many many colorful lights.

Over time through hard training she was able to perfect her vision and be able to distinguish between a lot of things and even see things that only have very little chaos energy in them!

13) Axel the Axolotl*

I don’t really have much info on them I made them pretty random one day bc i thought. hey. .... what if... axolotl sonic character.

14) Azul the cat

Azul is my sonicsona kinda. He was pmuch my persona b4 i was kin w shadow.

He’s an edgelord and i guess he’s still technically me; or rather what i want to be.

He’s already on T and has has top op and he does not crumble away under social anxiety like i do askjdsakjd.

15) ( UNKNWOWN) the Pangolin*

Similar to Axel I didn’t think much about him yet......

he’s aroace and kinda goofy but he cares for his friends. He can roll up and do spin dashes and homing attacks like sonic, but he obviously doesnt have his super sonic speed.

16) Coal the hedgehog

Coal is one of the newest of my characters; but he’s also one of my oldest.

You see, Coal is a revamp of a very old crappy fanchild i had back in like 2012.

for reference thats him

New Coal is 27 years old and a gay mess. He can turn into a cloud of smoke and control it at will. He is completely immune to physical attacks. try to stab/shoot him and u ded. hes coming for u.

he steals, but only from rich ppl. hes chaotic neutral tho bc he keeps that shit for himself safhsaljfha he generally just wants to chill and have his peace.

he loves being an edge lord though he just wants that image for himself, even though he is kinda a softie... hes good at keeping up an act in dangerous situations though and that sometimes scares attackers off (also his powers)

Some gijinka doodles that make his age more justice than sonic style aksjfhaskj

17, 18, 19) The Crew On ARK

old bad art but i never really drew them, i did write about them in my fic about shadows past! (im excluding the black guy from the list because i didnt write him yet and i guess hes not really established yet since i got literally nothing on him)

from left to right

Nia, (that dude), Hikari, (gerald), Theodor

Nia is the daughter of a shamaran professor and a woman who owns a boulongerie in spagonia. She joined the ARK program in hope to make the world a more accepting place.

Hikari is is from an island near chun-nan (japan) and she also joined the program in hope to be able to help make a change for the better. she also enjoys biology and genetics a lot.

Theodor joined purely because of his joy in working on genetics and robotics that immitate life. He’s innitially from the GUN team but was assigned to work with Gerald.

20) Commander Jonathan Williams

old art again sorry sakjfhsakj. He is the father of the current GUN commander! He’s 52 and a total douchebag. He’s kinda mad with power and genuinely believes that putting shadow under pressure to become the ultimate and strongest weapon (stronger than an atomic bomb) was necessary to end the war that was going on at that time.

I cannot spoil too much on what happened to each of these people as it’s spoilers for my fanfic.

If you want to know more, read here -> http://archiveofourown.org/works/10992156/chapters/24482199

21) Sidus “Nova” the black panther (and 22 Badass the Chao)

You see. The thing with nova is that i recycled him as human/demon character for a story sjkhfkafhsakj but he has shadow powers where he can use all shadows as portals into a shadow dimension that is entirely his own. he can travel through that but it makes him very tired. he likes to store capri suns in there and just take em out whenever he wants. He has a Chao called Badass (pictured below)

his new human/demon design is below

23) Blossom the horned Frog

She is new and I don’t have much info other than that she’s from a jungle area; perhaps in adabat.

She secrets a poisonous slime from her body; yet her spit has healing accelerating properties.

A gene defect lets her never lose her tail.

24) Nexus the demonic sheep hound

nexus is a demonic sheep hound mix?? idk i just didnt want to draw hooves aksfsakhfa

they can manipulate metal and bend it in any shape they want

however they cant make it float n shit like youd think of metal powers like magneto jsfhsakjf they can literally just. shape it like play-doh but with their mind

they wear those gold rings so when theyre in a pinch they can just make a bunch of cool knifes of a sword n be like SURPRISE BITCH IM NOT JUST PRETTY. IM PRETTY DEADLY!

#my characters #shadows logbook

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