#in fact one may argue that it is ESSENTIAL

[starlightkun]

omg i just searched and it's actually angels.. it's just been so long but bambis was definitely in the running for a solid month before he confirmed angels YASSSS

link: https://twitter.com/sungchandaily/status/1353235496382517248?t=9NP-X-Czb2fSlz-FggAWZQ&s=19

i love how normal he is. Next thing we need is a beret on him and them doing the croissant trend on tiktok

- 🫶 sungchan lover anon

he looks soooo good in that video i need that hair back 💗💗💗

is....is this a safe space for me to say smth 🫣......its my blog so yes: i think if individual idols give their fans a name it should relate to the idol in some way (10vely, etc.) or be an inside joke/reference of some kind yknow? unless im missing smth here angels is very cute don't get me wrong (if he calls me that catch me teeheeing n shit) but i think a fan name should, to someone outside that fan base, be recognizable as a fan name, even if they cant tell what idol it's for? also certainly some idol already calls their fans this surely? right??

anyway sungchan is justsomeguy but he IS weird (when he was in nct other members usually said he had a 4D personality). i think he's one of those idols that ppl forget is weird bc he's good looking (think jaehyun or cha eunwoo) so his weird behavior doesnt register pretty privilege but he is like. weird. like, normal weird. but weird.

[eelhound]

"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?

This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).

But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."

- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.

[jerryseinfeldisafurry]

I have to speak my peace about Captain Curly

Warning: mouthwashing spoilers

So, I’ve noticed a lot of people saying the same points that are essentially: “Oh Curly is a piece of shit because he just let his buddy get away with assaulting Anya”

And I am here to argue against this point. So at no point does Curly deny, or tell Anya that what she went through never happened, or anything like that. Usually, when somebody “supports their friend” after said friend commits assault, they will react with disbelief, or just general distrust for the person accusing their friend. I feel like the fact that Anya continuously makes small references to the assault situation around Curly, and the fact she talks and is alone with Captain Curly so often, are indicators that she has not been met with disbelief or distrust on his end.

When a victim receives a bad reaction to telling somebody about their assault, they usually do not bring it up or talk about it with that person after that. They also would not have the same dynamic, the same relaxed mannerisms that Anya has with Curly.

Now, onto the point where people accuse Curly of enabling Jimmy, I also don’t think that’s true. They are stuck on a relatively small ship, with no way out for over a year. They can’t risk hurting or punishing Jimmy, because Curly of all people will know how reactionary and violent Jimmy can be. They can’t kill him, because that’s illegal, and Curly is unfortunately responsible for Jimmy considering he is the Captain of the ship. Aside from the fact that, with the way Pony Express is shown to treat the crew, if they harmed or killed one of their own crew members it’s entirely possible that they would not get paid at all, and all the work and time and energy (and suffering, on Anya’s part) would literally be for nothing. Then they also get tried for murder, and they would have to prove that Jimmy did something wrong, they would have to prove that Jimmy assaulted Anya. After half a year of him being dead, with no physical evidence to prove what he did except a pregnancy that they can’t prove was forced upon her.

Curly is not enabling his friend, and trying to sweep the situation under the rug, he is literally constantly trying to deescalate the situation. Curly doesn’t act like he’s just trying to make the situation disappear. When Anya expresses that she’s uncomfortable, she doesn’t even say out right that she doesn’t want to do his evaluation. Yet Curly decides to volunteer despite not really having the experience, and it also not being in his job description. After Anya tells Jimmy she’s pregnant, and she’s scared for her life, Curly goes to try and talk to Jimmy. He tries to get Jimmy to calm down, and to think rationally, he tries to keep Jimmy from acting out. and then Jimmy goes and crashes the entire fucking ship into an asteroid. Even if they wanted to imprison him, there was nowhere to put him. The only places that had locks were the cockpit and medical. We saw what happened when he was in the cock pit alone, and the last place he needs to be is the one place that Anya can really call her own.

When Curly says he’ll talk to Jimmy, that’s not him belittling the situation. He needs to stay calm and reassure Anya that he’s trying to help her. If Curly was immediately like “I’m gonna go kick his ass” or if he insisted on some sort of retaliation against Jimmy, then that would just stress Anya out more. There is no way to keep eyes on Jimmy at all times, and if he faces any punishment over Anya then she knows he will find a way to punish her for it. Aside from the fact that, I think Curly may have done whatever she asked, especially with the way he emphasized he’d do “anything” to help her when she first tells him that she’s pregnant. He informs her that he truly cares about her, her wellbeing is his responsibility.

Anya also seems to be way too forgiving for her own good. Even when she thought Curly tried to kill all of them, all she had to say was that she couldn’t believe that a person’s worst moments make them a monster. If she was willing to forgive what she thought was attempted murder, I’m sure she came up with every excuse in the book for Jimmy. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying she deserved it. She didn’t. What she went through was fucking awful and horrific. But it’s in her nature to forgive people, even when they really don’t fucking deserve it. We don’t even know if she knew she was assaulted the whole time, since there’s a good chance that Jimmy manipulated her into thinking she deserved it/wanted it. It may be possible that she thought she deserved it, and was too ashamed to speak about it openly for a while, with only the feelings of disgust and shame to accompany her.

Let’s also take into consideration that Anya was not the only person Jimmy was abusive to. We saw the way he talked to Curly, especially at the birthday celebration. Jimmy was an abusive dickhead to everyone. The last time Curly tried deescalating the situation before the crash, Jimmy immediately started taking the stuff Curly told him in confidence and using it against him, to make Curly just as miserable as he was. Jimmy turned his own suffering into shared suffering because then he could tell himself that he wasn’t just trying to get away from his own actions, he was trying to HELP his friend, who was also suffering.

My point is, I think too many people are not thinking deeply enough about Curly, as well as the context on the entire situation. They are putting blame on him when he is also a victim of Jimmy. It was literally just an overall shitty situation

[colonelarr0w]

Hi 👋

Can u write Yuta, Gojo, Kokichi, and Noritoshi (the student) with a fem s/o who's very calm,quiet, and scary in public bcz of their scars and muscular body but when they are alone she's very sweet and shy :)

Make it fluff, and it's up to you if u wanna make it headcanons or whatever :)

Sypnosis - How would these boys fare with an S/O who doesn't look the most approachable at times?

Includes - Yuuta Okkotsu, Satoru Gojo, Kokichi Muta, Noritoshi Kamo

Warning(s) - none besides mention of scarring on Reader

! PIECE BEGINS UNDERNEATH THE CUT !

You were not exactly known to have a friendly face or an approachable person – avoided by many in most social settings thanks to the deep furrow of your brow and the frown that curls the corners of your mouth downward. Though you could be doing something as simple as thinking about what to prepare for dinner that night, your exterior displayed a deep anger for any and all that surrounded you.  

You had built up walls that were borderline impenetrable … that is … until he steps into your life.  

YUUTA OKKOTSU  

Like many, at first, Yuuta was intimidated by you. You carried yourself in such a way that made it seem as if you were uninterested in everyone around you – which included him when he first transferred to Jujutsu Tech. 

Even Gojo seemed hesitant to introduce you, gesturing to you quickly with a wave of his hand before doing his absolute best to change the subject without it being noticed by you, Yuuta, or any of the other second-years.  

One of the first things that Yuuta notices about you is the thin scars that line your arms, little stories of the missions that you had been on and reminders of the curses that you had defeated.  

In truth, your appearance only adds to the mysterious, intimidating persona that you seemed to have adopted — one that deeply scared others and continuously drove them away from you.  

Initially, it seems like the only person that you tolerate is Maki, considering that she’s the only one that you show a sliver of emotion to. She’s the only one that you offer a soft smile to, the only one that you regard without that sharpened ice in your voice, the only one that you really showed that you were … well … human.  

The other second-years had your favor as well; Yuuta quite enjoyed watching you train with Panda or playfully argue with Inumaki. He just wished that he had the courage to do what they did — which essentially was just talking to you.  

It’s only really with Panda’s pushing that Yuuta eventually builds up enough courage to approach you, hesitantly asking if you’d wanted to spar with him (Maki was preoccupied with Inumaki). Shockingly, you smiled softly at him and accepted.  

The rest was, quite literally, history.  

Little by little, Yuuta makes his way over the walls that you had built up around your heart, soft eyes and gentle smile worming its way into your life without any intent of ever leaving.  

He begins to realize that the way you acted with him was a complete 180 to how you acted around others. You regarded him with a soft tone, you touched him with gentle palms, you cooed sweet praises to him and hugged him tightly on those cold nights. 

You may be a force to be reckoned with out on the field, but to Yuuta? You were the soft-spoken girl that he devoted his entire heart to.  

SATORU GOJO 

At first, Gojo doesn’t want to think that he finds you intimidating. He tries to be nonchalant when he sees you standing beside Nanami, but you don’t miss the way that his eyes flicker around the room — desperately trying to look anywhere but where you stand.  

His gaze is drawn to your scars almost immediately, slightly impressed at the fact that you do very little to hide them. In any other case, he would say that you were proud of them (at least, that’s what he thought).  

But, ever the confident man, Gojo does eventually decide to approach you (literally the second that Nanami leaves the room). He tries to crack a joke or two, hoping that you would break and that maybe you would crack a smile. You don’t … and he physically deflates. 

That does very little to actually deter him though. Actually, he makes it his personal mission to make his way over the walls that you’ve so obviously put up around your heart. While everyone else would find his actions downright annoying, you find them oddly endearing.  

It’s rare that someone takes such an interest in you, considering that the aura you radiated was really anything but initially friendly. To see Gojo try so hard to capture your attention … well, it only makes you that much more interested in just why he was so dead set on you.  

Eventually, Gojo finally finds it in himself to properly ask you out — in his very own Satoru Gojo way. A bouquet of overpriced roses, a night at a resturant with pricing that could probably pay your mortgage, and a sweet walk that ended with Gojo hopelessly devoting himself to you.  

He adores the change in your personality — how you can easily switch from sternly speaking to your students to mumbling to him as if he were the only thing in your world that mattered.  

But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t also love the firm persona you take on when you’re, for example, out for a day together.  

He adores you … always and forever. 

KOKICHI MUTA  

Unlike the others, Kokichi isn’t immediately put off by your appearance. If anything, he’s intrigued by it. In a way, you remind him of himself; kept to yourself and separated from others — it makes him want to interact with you right at that moment.  

He won’t ever admit it to your face, but the first time that he did end up speaking to you, he was quite literally shaking under your gaze. You were just so damn assertive. 

At first, you come off as very bothered by Kokichi – but he quickly learns that it's the complete opposite. Just because you were this scarred, unapproachable individual didn't make you any less human than Kokichi himself.  

Slowly but surely, he makes his way over those walls that you had built up around your heart, opening you up and revealing that softened persona that lay hidden underneath it all. The sweet-eyed, soft-spoken girl who really wanted nothing more than to love and be loved in return.  

Upon coming to that realization, Kokichi finds himself gentler with you – just like you were with him. His words are soft-spoken and truthful, his actions performed out of the kindness of his heart rather than if the situation called for it.  

All in all, Kokichi feels a sense of protectiveness over you once you finally open yourself up to him. You were being vulnerable with him in a way that you simply weren't around others. And he was going to protect that vulnerability, no matter what it took.  

NORITOSHI KAMO 

Out of all the previously mentioned characters, Noritoshi is the one who minds the least about your appearance. If anything, he finds himself relating to you — considering that many don’t approach him as well for various reasons.  

And so because of that, he approaches you with as much confidence as he could muster, striking up a conversation with you and regarding you just as softly and respectfully as he would anyone else.  

You’re caught off guard by him at first, though slowly but surely, you and Noritoshi constantly seek the other out.  

He admires your ability to switch between being stoic and cold to soft and sweet. How around others you wore an expression as cold as the harshest winter, but the moment that you heard the lull of his voice, you were turning to him with a gentle smile.  

Noritoshi admires your scars actually, spending many nights just laying at your side with his fingertips dragging over the raised skin. He’ll hum a quiet song for the both of you, holding you and simply moving his fingers along your arm or leg.  

Another thing that Noritoshi adores about you is the way you whisper to him during your time spent together — how you lower and soften your voice when speaking to him. He smiles gently at you when he notices, then holding your face and decorating your face with little kisses.  

He doesn't mind your switch from soft to stoic, he knows that it's just what you're used to and it's become the norm for you. To him, you're still his lover, his absolute everything -- no matter what persona you decide to put on for the day. 

[linkspooky]

GOOD SIBLING, BAD SIBLING: THE FIRE SIBLINGS VS. STARFIRE AND BLACKFIRE

What could two siblings born in a royal family where one is scapegoated and the other treated like a golden child possibly have in common? More than you think.

This post is making the rounds again and I thought it would be fun to make a longer post going into depth why I think Starfire and Blackfire avert the common trope of good sibling bad sibling, by comparing it to something that fails to avoid that trope. If you like doomed siblings or bad victims then click the readmore.

Good Sibling, Bad Sibling

To start off with I'm going to explain what I mean when I use the words Good Sibling, Bad Sibling. It's a trope that's an extention of what I call Good Victim, Bad Victim. It's when a story compares two victims of abuse, and one victim is a more acceptable victim while the other is a bad victim because they're not perfect suffering Cinderellas.

Victims of course still have agency in their responses, they're still culpable if their actions go on to hurt someone, they don't have a right to hurt others, but I think it's also true most people are quick to judge victims for not being strong enough to endure abuse when they haven't been in the same situation.

It's easy from an outsider's perspective to be "I wouldn't do that". It comes from a pretty shallow view that villainizes abusers and renders them as inhuman monsters when the truth is all abusers are still humans and anyone can fall into patterns of abuse whether they mean to or not.

One reason I hate this trope besides like, the fact characters that aren't perfect victims are often considered "too far gone" and murdered by the narrative, it's also just really shallow. In the end it usually comes down to the victim getting love and support healing and the victim who didn't have support getting worse. Which is like, a no duh of a situation. A person without friends or a support system or love in their life tends to not get better? Who woulda guessed.

Good Sibling, Bad Sibling shows up when two siblings are raised under the same house, sometimes even in the same abusive circumstances and one is a hero and the other is a villain. Another version of this tropes is the fact that if there are twins one of them is usually going to be a good twin and the other is an evil twin.

I can understand where this trope comes from because like siblings are a naturally close relationship, so it makes it a deeply personal conflict when a character's sibling turns against them. I don't even think it's a necessarily bad trope, if both characters are humanized equally which almost never happens.

Examples of this trope: Gammorra and Nebula, Mai and Maki, Shoto and Toya, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, Itachi and Sasuke.

And of course, Starfire and Blackfire, and Zuko and Azula.

My goal is to show by breaking the source material, New Teen Titans and the Avatar Cartoon down the former averts the trope and the latter plays it straight.

The Golden Child and the Scapegoat

A common trope used in dysfuctional families is dividing children between a golden child, and a scapegoat. The parent often projects all of their positive qualities on a golden child, along with high expectations. While the Scapegoat has all their negative qualities projected on them, and is often blamed unfairly for the dysfunction in the house. They are scapegoated so to speak, and constantly the victim of things like shifting goalposts.

It's like a more extreme version of playing favorites with an extra dollop of abuse on top. Also to be clear, this is an abusive dynamic where both sides are abused. They're not being seen as parents by their parents, and they are essentially being pitted against each other. There are plenty of parents who will be just as harsh on their perceived favorite. Being the golden child doesn't really safeguard you from abuse, even if it seems to be the more favorable position to be in.

Also in general when discussing abuse, arguing over who has it worse is kind of a pointless argument.

Also sometimes the playing favorites is intentional. By splitting up siblings and putting them against each other, the parent gets more control over each of them like a divide and conquer strategy. After all an abusers primary objective is to maintain control over someone by patterns of abusive behavior meant to wear down their sense of resistance.

With that being established, comparing the two royal families is interesting because the "hero" sibling is the golden child in one version, and the "villain" sibling is the scapegoat in another. If anything this proves that both forms of abuse can be the reason for a villain's tragic backstory.

STARFIRE AND AZULA THE PERFECT PRINCESS

Starfire might appear at first to be the total opposite of Azula. One of them is a hero who's like entire character is built around her overflowing emotions and the love she feels for people. While Azula is cold, calculating, and often treats her own friends like pawns instead of people. Starfire also doesn't repeat the cycle of abuse, while Azula does.

If you look past that there's a lot of comparisons to draw between the two of them. They are both raised in warrior, war-like cultures. The Tamaraneans may be all about that peace and love but like, an early conflict with Starfire's is that because she was raised on a planet as a warrior she doesn't understand why other heroes have a no-kill rule.

Azula is also a product of her culture. To begin with she's raised as a child soldier, of a nationalist and imperialist nation who are actively colonizing half the war. Azula also contributes significantly to the war effort, and never shows any doubt to the values of her culture.

As a brief summary of their early characters, Azula is princess of the fire nation which went to war with the world. She's the daughter of the Fire Nation's absolute ruler. She's however, the second born and not ever expected to inherit the throne. She is introduced in season one when Zuko vents to an unconscious Aang about how everything has always been easy for his sister. In Season two she becomes the main antagonist, first tasked with retrieving her brother, and then decides to try to capture the avatar on her own. I'd also be remiss to mention that Azula is the most personal antagonist the heroes face, because Ozai is more of a final boss. Starfire is an alien that was sold by her sister into slavery essentially (Blackfire is not a good person). She escaped to earth and became a member of the Teen Titans where she found a new family and worked as a hero. She's basically an immigrant to earth and there's a lot of culture shock. Starfire eventually returns home to her planet when it's in danger, and faces her sister as an antagonist.

This is another way in which they differ, Azula is the primary antagonist and negative foil to Zuko, and Blackfire is the primary antagonist and negative foil to Starfire.

While both basically have the tentative position of the favorite, while their sibling is demonized, it's made clear to them that they're not actually "safe" with their parents. Both sets of parents are awful and the origin of all abuse within the household. These characters also receive a slap in the face after being in denial for a long time that these parents will even mistreat their "favorite" child and treat them like an object.

Though, I would argue that Starfire is more in denial about her parent's abuse and will still see them as loving parents, while Azula is aware that her father could turn on her and strives for perfection to keep herself "safe".

Note Starfire is still saying this stuff after her parent's sold her into a political marriage.

Ozai: My decision is final. Azula: You ... you can't treat me like this! You can't treat me like Zuko! Ozai: Azula, silence yourself. Azula: But it was my idea to burn everything to the ground! I deserve to be by your side!

I've seen some people's unsympathetic readings of this line that Azula throws Zuko under the bus, but like... Azula doesn't want to be abused like her brother. What a monster. Let's see how you react when the father you thought was safe turns on you, I think most people would say or do anything not to get hurt.

I don't want to sound too critical of Starfire because she has her reasons (Blackfire abused her severely) but both Starfire and Azula seem to justify their parent's abuse to themselves by saying Blackfire or Zuko did something to cause the abuse. Sliding the blame from the abuser to the abuse victim. They participate in the parent's scapegoating of the the least favorite child.

I'd like to point out though that the ultimate cause of the situation is the parents themselves. The abuse started when they are children, and expecting Starfire and Azula as children to like, go out of their way to protect their abused siblings is expecting a lot out of them.

Like Azula is afraid to lose her position as the favorite because Ozai has demonstrated before that he'll horribly mutilate his children. Who would have guessed. Blackfire severely abused Starfire in their childhood, so she sees Blackfire as her enemy and not her parents who would have guessed.

In general too, expecting Starfire and Azula to be perfect siblings in an abusive household, and always protect their siblings, is once again a lot to expect from literal children who don't have fully developed brains.

However, I would say in both cases, they both try harder to connect with their sibling. This is where I get angry anons in my inbox, yes I'm going to make the argument that Azula was a better sibling than Zuko was to her. No I also don't expect Zuko to be a perfect big brother when actively being abused by Ozai. No I don't think Zuko owes Azula anything because she too prioritized her own well being over him that's what abuse victims do.

I'm just making the argument with in text examples that Azula does more things to help Zuko, and Starfire actively tried to befriend Blackfire before the sibling abuse started. In fact I think that's what makes both relationships incredibly tragic. It's not really two siblings who love each other on opposite sides of a conflict. It's that Blackfire and Zuko can't see past their own abuse, and can't love their siblings.

Once again I'm not blaming Zuko for priotizing himself, but I also think it's unfair to critcize Azula for taking care of herself and not sticking her neck out for Zuko when they were both being abused. Wow why are people extra harsh on Azula and extra forgiving on Zuko. It's almost like women are always expected to be perfect nurturers, and when they're not allowed to be complex human beings with flaws. My old enemy the Madonna Whore complex you strike again!

Anyway onto the examples. The big one is that Azula invited Zuko back after Ba Sing Se, seemed genuine about wanting to help resstore his honor. This is also a sacrifice on her part, because as I said even when he was banished Zuko didn't lose the title of crown prince. His status as the heir was never in question and like, letting Zuko stay a prisoner in Ba Sing Se would have ensured his inheritance would fall to her.

Why don't you let him decide, Uncle? [To Zuko.] I need you, Zuko. I've plotted every move of this day, [Makes a fist.] this glorious day in Fire Nation history, and the only way we win is together. At the end of this day, you will have your honor back. You will have Father's love. You will have everything you want.

Now common criticisms people use to argue that Azula has good intentions.

1) Azula needed Zuko to turn the tides in battle. While Azula was kind of in a corner in the fight where Zuko turned she also had Mai and Ty Lee and the entire Dai Li on her side so I don't think she'd really assume she needed Zuko to defeat the avatar. Also she starts getting backed into a corner long after she made the offer to Zuko so she had no way of knowing that ahead of time. Also, also, she might have just been backed into a corner for the sake of drama, making it more impactful when Zuko shows up and turns the tide.

2) Azula somehow knew she might not kill the avatar and needed Zuko to take the fall. This one doesn't make sense because Azula doesn't have any idea that Aang didn't die, until Zuko hints at it. After that point, Zuko kept it a secret from her and refused to tell her even though the truth being revealed would impact both of them. Like for Azula to know ahead of time she'd fail to kill the avatar when she made her offer to Zuko, and then bring him back to take the fall would require some 4d chess on her end.

Two more examples are Azula goes out of her way to warn Zuko that he might get in trouble for visint Iroh so often. On the Beach she's the one who comforts him and retrieves him from their old vacation house. When they're in front of the fire and Zuko is troubled she asks him what's wrong and even asks if she's the one at fault. Whereas Zuko mocks her for not having problems when Azula confesses her mother thought she was a monster he doesn't say anything in response.

In Tales of the New Teen Titans we get a closer look at Starfire and Blackfire's childhood, and we're shown Starfire tried hard at first to get along with her sister. Starfire also, in spite of being a victim of Blackfire's abuse went out of her way to save her life twice.

Something Blackfire responded with by immediately trying to kill her. Blackfire, you are a piece of work. In both cases, I'd argue Starfire and Azula try at least to have a positive relationship with their siblings. Attempts that are almost completely one-sided. I don't want to demonize Zuko too much though, because as I said when you're actively being abused it's number one easy to see the other sibling as being better off, and only natural you would prioritize yourself.

Also, Blackfire was an adult and continued the abuse later on in life when she had more agency, whereas Zuko for most of the tv show was a minor and you shouldn't hold minors to adult standards. If I judge characters for having an imperfect reaction to abuse, or not being perfect siblings I can no longer call myself a bad victim enjoyer.

Both Starefire and Azula as I said, participate in the scapegoating. In both cases it's out of a desire to maintain their spot as the golden child, because they want to assume they're safe.

Starfire actively defends her aprents all the time, while insisting that Blackfire was evil to begin with. Which is understandable again because Blackfire's abuse is just so much worse than anything Azula does to Zuko. It's expecting a little too much for Starfire to see the humanity in her abuser when she's a lifelong victim.

Like little blackfire things: Killing her sister's pet.

Phsyical abuse, actively trying to kill her even before they were on opposite sides of a war.

Selling her into Slavery (where Starfire was sexually abused).

It's extra tragic because both are essentially blaming the other for their parent's abuse. Blackfire takes out her pain on Starfire as revenge for her parent's favoritism, even though it's not her fault. Starfire demonizes Blackfire because she refuses to confront the fact that her parent's are abusive.

This is behavior Azula engages in as well. If you read into her actions, you can tell she blames Zuko for his abuse, you can't treat me like Zuko, while also believing that if she can just make Zuko act more like a prince he won't provoke his father anymore. Once again, sliding the blame on the abused rather than the abuser makes Azula feel more safe, because she also believes if she's perfect Ozai will leave her alone.

Zuko and Blackfire: The Banished Prince and the DIsowned Princess

This is another pair of seeming opposites. Blackfire is essentially Starfire's most personal arch enemy, occupying the same spot as Azula. Zuko is a villain for awhile, but honestly he's bad at it, and until the end of Season 1 he's so ineffectual he's more comic relief. Blackfire like Azula is insanely competent and causes a lot of genuine harm to the protagonists, and is far far worse than Zuko or even Azula obviously. I mean I've already listed some of the things she did above, but she also let her planet be conquered by aliens, orchestrated not one but two cues, and tried to have her parents blown up on live television.

However, both characters are effectively disowned and banished from their country for their inability to fit in. Both are banished and excessively punished.

Blackfire is the first born princess of Tamaran and she should have been heir to her family, but she was stripped of her inheritance because she was born disabled. Every Tamaranean can fly except her because of a sickness that nearly killed her when she was younger.

That's right everyone, the disabled representation you've been waiting for the sibling abuser and war-mongerer.

I think Blackfire's abuse covers a common way parent's treat their disabled children, where they don't want to make accomodations and make it clear they' don't want to take care of a disabled child and spend all their attention on their abled children instead. This trope is often called "Better dead than disabled."

Also I'd be remiss to point out that Tamaraneas have access to hover technology so Blackfire's disability doesn't inhibit her in any way. Like damn, parents will do anything but try to accomondate their disabled child.

Zuko is punished needlessly for a small offense of speaking out of turn in a meeting for not wanting to sacrifice young soldiers, and then refusing to fight back against his father in an angi kai. At which point he's banished and sent on a fool's errand of hunting the avatar.

Blackfire's reason for being banished is uhhh, because she tried to kill her sister in combat training, but also she was stripped of her inheritance just before being born disabled. She awas punished for things she couldn't control before she did anything wrong.

Both siblings also try to make up for their trauma and perceived deficiencies by constantly projecting violence. Blackfire is like, obsesed with war, Zuko's definition of honor is more focused around glory gained by combat more particularly killing the avatar in the first season. Both of them actively participated in colonization, Blackfire helped colonize her home planet, Zuko burned Kyoshi village and helped Azula with Ba Sing Se. Blackfire brought back an army to colonize her home planet, then attempts a military coup of a rather peaceful reign her parents secured not once but twice.

Both are blamed for their parent's abuse, it's Blackfire's fault because she was a violent and unlikable child she made it impossible to love her. It's Zuko's fault, he just didn't try hard enough to please his father and fit in as a prince.

While I may sound overly critical of Avatar's writing I do like how they gave Zukio a lot of chances to make mistakes and screw up, and instead of condemning him or dismissing him as too far gone they kept reinforcing that he always had a chance to better himself.

Both characters are really jealous and tend to blame the other sibling who's treated as the favorite for their abuse.

Zuko: "You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She is a firebending prodigy and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born... I don't need luck though - I don't want it. I've always had to struggle and fight and that's made me strong. It's made me who I am".

Though to give credit to Blackfire, while as a child she blamed Starfire for everything and used her as a punching bag, as an adult she seems to understand that the cause of their conflict was their parents and in fact tries to explain this to Starfire multiple times. So she's matured enough to see that Starfire is ultimately a victim too.

As I said too, Zuko is a child, he's also like still actively being victimized by Ozai while at the same time under the notion that if he does the right thing he can earn Ozai's love for 3/4ths of the show it's easy to understand why he'd blame Azula for his position as the scapegoat instead of Ozai.

Zuko never attempts to convince Azula to change sides with him, or considers that an option. When Azula is like, falling through the air about to die he doesn't tell his friends piloting the bison to try to save her. His stated goal when fighting Azula in the fignal agni kai is to put her in her place. That's literally a line he says.

Zuko, the empath when noticing she's having a total mental breakdown says "She's kind of off" and decides to take advantage of that to win the fight. When Azula finally breaks down and is screaming and crying, he just kind of sits there looking bored.

I'm not arguing that Zuko owes her anything that's a personal opinion, just that it's inconsistent with Zuko's writing. Zuko is presented to us as a character revolving around redemption, that learns that love and forgiveness are key to growth and healing and then just... doesn't apply those same lessons he learned to his sister.

That same kind of hypocrisy is present in Starfire, but it's like intentional. Starfire's inability to empathize with her sister, when her entire character revolves around empathy and love shows just how damaged her relationship with her sister is. Even then Starfire like, saves her life twice and was never able to kill her. With far more reason to not empathize with her sister, while blatantly hating her, Starfire still has that tiny bit of empathy for her. It's also like, Tamaraneans are a violent warrior people, and they're also extremely emotional and full of love, Starfire embodies both sides of that.

It's not just Blackfire either, it takes Starfire a long time to learn that she can't just kill criminals (again understandable, a cultural thing, in fact people like Dick are a little bit too harsh on her for this instead of trying to explain and understand where she's coming from). It is consistent with Starfire's writing, she is openly loving, but she's not the team mom that's Donna.

Zuko like, not even trying to redeem Azula or just like, not really caring is inconsistent with the writing that's trying to tell us that deep down Zuko is a caring person that is going to help heal the fire nation by showing them a better path forward. Zuko's double standards towards his sister, and his unfairly blaming her for his father's abuse is not written as a flaw. Blackfire unfairy blaming Starfire for her parent's abuse is a flaw. Blackfire's abuse of Starfire is her own fault, which is something she continues to do well into adulthood.

Which is why it's kind of all the more baffling, that Blackfire is way worse, is humanized a lot more by her narrative than Azula is. Now we reach the final part.

The Final Agni Kai

Now to trash on everyone's favorite scene that I absolutely despise as the end to Zuko and Azula's arc, while praising what is my favorite arc in the whole New Teen Titans manga. In the series finale of Avatar, Zuko after reuniting with Iroh is tasked with challenging Azula for the throne in the Agni Kai. They fight, and Zuko comes out on top.

In what is essentially the final fight between Starfire and Blackfire, Starfire is alerted by her brother that things are going down on her planet. She leaves earth with the Teen Titans and returns to her planet for a second time. Where she learns that she is being sold by her parents into an arranged marriage, as a part of a peace agreement with the invading force of her planet. Something that Starfire does not take well too, because she's currently in love with her longtime boyfriend Dick Grayson.

I'm going to skip over the Soap opera that is Starfire and Dick, because it's soon revealed that Blackfire too has returned in order to orchestrate a coup to overthrow her parents once more.

In the end Blackfire reveals her plan that she's set up an ion bomb to hold the whole planet hostage unless her parents abdicate and declare her ruler. At which point, Blackfire succeeds.

Both plots involve the scapegoat finally reclaiming their heritage and beating their sibling for the first time, one is the hero, the other is the villain... or are they?

There's a reason I love one arc and hate the other. It's that Blackfire is eventually allowed to be her own seperate character from Starfire, whereas Azula is ultimately just a plot object to strengthen Zuko's arc. This is shown in just, the amount of focus Zuko and his inner world are compared to Azula, how he has one of the most lovingly tailored redemption arcs shown throughout the entire show whereas Azula's mental breakdown is rushed through the entire end.

However, to further illustrate this let me show how well the New Teen Titans humanizes Koriand'r. To begin with, we see their childhood from both perspectives, to show both are biased narrators. Starfire represents her sister as being born evil, while Blackfire believes Starfire being the favorite took all her parent's love away from her.

Blackfire also gets, sympathetic motivations that demonstrate she's also capable of love and craves it deep down but suppresses it because she believes she needs to be a weapon of war. Something that is directly stated by the comics and only like implied by offhand by the avatar show.

In fact Blackfire gets to star in her own comic which tells a story where she is temporarily blinded after her first defeat to Starfire. After feeling helpess she feels like she's lost the will to fight, the will to kill, the will to rule which is how she defines herself.

Blackfire survives with one of her soldiers who doesn't abandon her, and helps teach with her rehabilitation teaching her how to fight while blind. Their relationship grows so close that Dorion feels like the first person that ever took care of Blackfire, and she breaks down and admits how much she wants to be loved. She almost seems willing to give up her conquest.

However, Blackfire misses out on the chance to be loved because her fanatically devoted soldier tricks her into killing him in order to show her that she still has the edge to kill.

This also clues us into more complex motivations for Blackfire. She is actively a patriot who believes that her father's rule is weak (she turns out to be right) and believes that conquering her planet is in effect her way of saving it. She has to put on this persona because the cause is more important than anything in her life, even love.

(This also contrasts Starfire who has no interest in being a ruler and runs away to live on earth with her love).

Also I'd be remiss to mention at the end of this particular arc Starfire doesn't forgive her sister or reconcile with her. I've never believed she owed her that. The arc just shows that Blackfire a human being (or a tamaranean I guess) who is capable of both good and evil. That her motivations are more complex than being a power hungry usurper and she actually can have good intentions. She's more of an example of the 'Well-intentioned Extremist" trope.

It's the complete opposite of Azula who's reduced to the mad queen stereotype in the end. Which is another knock against Avatar, Blackfire might not be the best disabled representation in the world but as I said parent's only treating their disabled child as a burden and that disabled child watching their parents take care of and love their abled children is a real thing that happens all the time. The comic also goes to show how competent Blackfire is in sipte of her disability.

Whereas, I can't imagine what it feels like to see yourself in Azula's mental breakdown, only to watch her last moment on the show have her offered no support, and not even a single sign that she might recover one day. Blackfire's motivations are tied to her abuse, but she's not demonized for being disabled in fact she's fantastically competent. Azula's like, readuced to an inhuman, ugly monster, and her mental illness takes all of her agency away and once again we're shown no hope for recovery.

Azula is reduced to a screaming incoherent mess. She has basically no agency in the end. Not only does Blackfire have agency, but like she has acutal points to make? The story values her point of view and gives credence to it? Myand'r is a weak ruler. She's not wrong when she says that their parents are the source of abuse for both of them. In fact, the narrative directly states the ones who started the abuse are their parents while it only implies it again with Azula and Zuko. Maybe the reason so many people deny that Azula is an abuse victim is because we only see the abuse from Zuko's perspective not Azula's. Whereas we get both conflicting accounts of Blackfire and Starfire's childhood and the narrative trusts us to judge things with nuance rather than needing it fed to us.

The planet has been invaded twice now. She's also, like, more popular with her father's weak rule?

Also like the story shows us why Blackfire will make a better ruler than Starfire. The narrative doesn't really illustrate how Zuko will be a better ruler, it just follows the "good king" trope.

I mean it's a fun little parallel that both Zuko and Blackfire are both an exiled prince and princess respectively, who return home to take back their throne. On one hand though, it feels like Zuko does it out of like, wanting to reclaim his birthright, or his feeling that the throne is his destiny. That's part of Blackfire's motivation too, but as I said, Zuko never states onscreen how he plans to improve the fire nation, Blackfire's got like actual policies.

Which is where the difference ultimately lies, Blackfire and Starfire are ultimately characterized as two sides of the same coin who need to come together to save the planet. Killing blackfire or putting her down won't fix shit or end the cycle of abuse on Tamaran. Blackfire and Starfire are much like Tamaran defined by love and war, and there's love and war in Starfire, and love and war in Blackfire and they both need to find a balance between the two.

This is in contrast to Zuko and Azula who's final conflict is just putting Azula down like a mad dog, quite literally. Blackfire is allowed to be human, with good and bad traits, and like actual points to make whereas Zuko's narrative only cares about Zuko's thoughts, and in general instead of coming together the narrative seems to think the only way that Zuko can triumph is if Azula is dragged down into the mud.

Blackfire is a character, and Azula is ultimately just a plot obstacle.

So that's my long ramble on a sibling relationship I absolutely love, and a sibling relationship I can't love no matter how much I like Zuko and Azula individually.

[dudethatsmyundeaduncle]

HERE IS WHY VIKTOR WALKED AWAY FROM JAYCE AFTER HE SAVED HIM AND WHY WE DIDN'T GET A DRAWN OUT DIVORCE!

(spoilers. Duh.)

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

short answer: It's because Viktor's dead.

Long answer:

So Arcane is all about people changing right? The first season was rife with the idea that if you want to become who you're meant to be you have to kill off your old self. (I'm paraphrasing here, and poorly, just REMEBER jinx's arc throughout the first SZN ok, powder had to die for jinx to live.)

In the show so far, we know arcane takes the idea of this change and charcter "death" very seriously. Ergo in that opening scene of s2e1 when Jayce sees Viktor crushed under the rubble and barely breathing Viktor is, for all the show's intents and purposes, dead.

This is where you may be shouting, NO BUT JAYCE RESSURECTED HIM! and listen I agree with you, Jayce physically resurrected Viktor, yes, but what came out of that cocoon is not Viktor. Lemme explain.

Arcane doesn't do ressurection, period, the show is about dying and changing, nobody stays the same, and if you die you come back different, unrecognizable even. (Jinx, Silco, Vander as Warwick) Singed is the only character who tries to keep things the same, preserve them, and those thing he has preserved have either been changed spectacularly anyway (jinx, Warwick/Vander) or they are Inert (Rio).

So when Jayce lays Viktor down on the lab table and he's all rekt, he is dead, like even if he's breathing Viktor is functionally dead, with no magical or medical intervention he will die/has died. (I have a bone to pick here a bit with the fact that Jayce didn't take him to a hospital. Maybe it was because of the glowy appendages but I doubt it. Which leads me to assume that Viktor's injuries were beyond medical treatment meaning, once again, that he's basically dead. )

Ergo when Jayce explicitly goes against Viktor's wishes to destroy the hexcore and instead fuses it into Viktor. What comes out of that cocoon isn't Viktor anymore.

Viktor says it himself when he walks out of the cocoon he asks " what am I?" And he says something like " I died/I should be dead." While it's subtle I think we, the audience, are meant to take this very LITTERALLY.

Even while Jayce is exclaiming that he" is alive" Viktor is very sure that he isn't, that he's dead and changed. (Hella bummed he didn't get a pretty arc for this change but I guess theyre counting S1 as his arc? Anyway)

There is very important moment I want to draw your attention to here, when Jayce embraces Viktor, in joy, and Viktor slowly returns the embrace one armed and leans into Jayce, he doesn't close his eyes. (I know this sounds crazy bare with me) What I'm positing here is that this is the first inkling that Viktor is gone because he doesn't accept what Jayce is telling/giving him.

Essentially in that reunion scene, imma call it a reunion, Jayce is giving Viktor everything he wanted, their dream, their partnership, Jayce's love and attention. (don't argue with me on this Viktor is s1 wanted both even it was unsaid) And Viktor refuses all of it, he doesn't accept Jayce's affection, he doesn't close his eyes when they embrace! closing his eyes, sinking into that hug would have been acceptance, it would have been the moment that Viktor, actual Viktor, had been waiting for. (and boy had he been waiting).

But what walked/crawled/clawed their way out of that cocoon isn't Viktor. Instead it's Viktor's body and whatever impression of Viktor, or maybe parts of his soul, he gave up/lost to the Hexcore.

I think the hexcore has, very litterally, become Viktor, like Jayce basically sacrificed Viktor's body to give the thing life and now it's wearing Viktor's face and has these remnants of his memories. I believe this because it also has Skye's voice!

The hexcore didn't have a voice before, it was like a weird murmuring hum, and Viktor couldn't understand it. But now whatever parts are left of Viktor and Skye have amalgamated into the hexcore and their good intentions/idealism are functioning to guide this newly born hexcore/machine herald. (That would explain why it leaves Jayce, it has the memories of Viktor's love but not the actual emotion, it would explain why it returns to the undercity, because it has memories of that place as "home" from both Vik and Skye, and it would also explain why the MH will eventually wear a mask, because it's not Viktor, it just has his face.)

So it makes sense when the machine herald leaves Jayce after that confession and offer, because it's not Viktor anymore. Viktor is dead and Jayce failed to save him.

Anyway, hope that cleared it up for you, of course THIS IS JUST A THEORY! AN ARCANE THEORY (I couldn't help myself)

A/N, this explanation isnt meant to, like, invalidate any complaints that the Divorce arc was too rushed/fast/thrown aside. Because in a lot of ways I think it was!

This also isn't to say that this explanation I give above is the perferred way to tell Viktor's story! Because I don't think it was! In many ways by killing Viktor and making him like, the human conduit for the hexcore, they have taken away 99% of Viktor's autonomy as a character. His choices are no longer his own, his actions are tainted by this corrupting force, he (if he is even alive) no longer is himself. This victimizes Viktor in a way I don't love but also draws away from his very valid and real pain and anger.

In the machine herald lore in LoL we have these ideas of transhumanism, self reinvention, and at its core, a guy who, pushed to his limits, turned his back on Pilotover and let his own hubris lead him to committing atrocious acts.

In LoL, Viktor becomes a monster, he chooses to be the machine herald, he meticulously replaces/removes parts of himself so he can become closer and closer to what he views as the " perfect machine". His glorious evolution surrounds this idea, that humanity is inherently weak and that the only way to overcome that weakness is to surrender to the machine, to evolve.

Arcane Viktor is not getting this Arc, whatever way they try to twist the magic they gave him he's not going to get this level of revenge or autonomy, he just isn't. His purpose is likely not going to be anywhere near as strong because like I said up top Viktor's a dead man. And he isn't getting to make choices anymore.

I'll end this post here before it gets unbearably long but feel free to pop off in the reblogs, tags, and comments lads!

Love Arcane too bits and can't wait for Act 2! JAYVIK NATION RISE!

[moonsaver]

Yan!sunday does genuinely care. At least he cares about you, if not anyone else.

In the initial stages of your.. "relationship", his continuous efforts were spat back with defiance and spite from you. It frustrated him. He has a lot on his shoulders, especially since he's an extremely prominent and influential figure. He keeps you tied down with many things but you fight back anyway, and it frustrates him. He wants normalcy, and he understands it's hypocritical, but Aeons, he wants to be domestically soft with you. And your defiance makes him almost aggressively frustrated, as gentle persuasion turns into barely constrained manhandling.

But yan!sunday still deeply cares. And of course, he hears you crying. He hears your painful sobs when you finally come to the realisation you will never see your friends and family ever again. You sob and weep and blabber and cry until you're tired and fatigued, and fall asleep. He waits for about half an hour outside your room after the silence, and walks in with padded, soft footsteps.

His sister, Robin, is more sympathetic to your situation, even if she enables him so. She comforts you so much more gently, and talks as though she may be on your side, urging you to talk to Sunday, make up and compromise on a solution with him. Sunday half wishes he could have easily talked to you like that, even if you rejected Robin's proposals.

Eventually, Robin tells Sunday to make use of the dreamscape he crafted for you. Essentially speaking, it was barren. It had no one else – just you and a strangely offsetting copy of Golden Hour, with no people. He would occasionally visit you there whenever he could, right after lulling you into the dream fluid, but it wouldn't – it couldn't – make up for the fact that at it's heart, it was soul-crushingly lonely.

So, even if you hate him more, bite his hand, snarl at him, react strongly, he will try. Yan!Sunday creates a simulation of family and friends in the Golden Hour, enjoying and roaming around everywhere. There, are you happy? Of course, none of your friends can be anything but platonic towards you, and your family won't ever scold you, or abandon you, or neglect you. Everyone will treat you lovingly so, and they will subtly encourage you to make up with Sunday.

Of course, you reacted strongly towards this. You woke up from the dream fluid, livid from anger. You argued, argued and argued with Sunday, and Robin could hear the noise through the wall, as you cried and wailed and sobbed, in defeat.

And of course, Yan!Sunday only gently lulls you back into his arms. You will come around. Eventually. The loneliness will drive you insane. You eventually come around to it, regardless of how.. strange it feels, you interact with your family and friends in the simulation. You talk and laugh, and you momentarily forget. Sunday watches. He hears. He knows. And it seems to alleviate your troubles for an adequate period of time. And until then, Sunday thinks of ways to get you to behave. And of course, Robin helps him do just that.

A bit of data collecting is important to get accurate personalities, anyway.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hello, I'm not sure if you've explained it or not but going in the depths of Malleus and Leona's character relationship? Like explaining their interactions and how they actually think of one another

Many fan works tend to depict Leona and Malleus as extremely antagonistic toward one another. However, the truth is that their relationship is more like a one sided dislike or annoyance (on Leona’s part). It’s not uncommon for them to bicker or have some tension in their conversations even when they have the same goal in mind such as protecting a harp (Beans Day) or wooing a ghost (although Malleus is not participating for the latter, Leona still insists the ghost would prefer him to Malleus to get that dig in). They’re definitely still on bad terms), but Malleus is generally pretty neutral with Leona unless he is provoked.

Leona’s beef with Malleus is story relevant and makes itself known in book 2. He appears to primarily dislike Malleus because it is thanks to his sheer power that Diasomnia crushes Savanaclaw every inter-dorm tournament, essentially dashing Savanaclaw students’ hopes of being scouted and going pro. Buuut it seems like from the way Leona speaks about his rival, he has long since held these feelings and they aren’t linked to a single inciting incident.

Part of why Leona dislikes Malleus in general seems to be Malleus’s attitude. Leona describes his fellow prince as “pretentious”, “high and mighty”, and acting in ways that show disrespect to him (like in Malleus’s Dorm Uniform vignettes, when he casted a spell meant for objects on Leona). He may also take issue with Malleus’s “incomprehensible fae humor”, which Leona references both during Halloween and in Malleus’s Ceremonial Robes. Additionally, Leona outright states that he hates people who refuse to listen (Silver) and just march to the beat of their own drum (Rook), which are traits you can argue also fits Malleus (since Malleus didn’t really listen to the upset dorm leaders in his Dorm Uniform vignettes). Leona appears to prefer dealing with Malleus to Silver though, as he says that Malleus’s ears aren’t just “for show”. Interestingly, Leona might dislike Malleus less than Rook; Leona is wary of so much as wishing Rook a happy birthday and refuses to dine next to Rook… yet Leona does sit next to Malleus at the end of Terror is Trending.

Leona is one of the few students who isn’t afraid of Malleus and has the gall to openly insult him (or is rude) on more than one occasion. He doesn’t really show any remorse or intent to apologize. In fact, Leona understands very well what bothers Malleus and often acts on those points of weakness to goad him, whereas it is very rare for Malleus to start the fights. For example, Leona tells Malleus in Malleus’s Ceremonial Robes vignettes, “You thinkin’ you’re gonna get it next time? Well, sorry to break it to you, but no one’s ever gonna invite you,” and, “You’re never gonna have a chance to wear those robes, so put’em away for good already.” This, of course, angers Malleus and leads into the two insulting one another’s physical features and exchanging threats (removing horns, declawing, calling each other animals or implying a lack of humanity, etc.). They similarly insult one another in Terror is Trending (again, Leona instigates: “Hmph, look at Mr. High-Horse over here. Were you flattered to be asked [to have your picture taken]?”) and again in Fairy Gala (Leona again: “Ever consider gettin’ off your tail and cleanin’ up your fellow fae’s mess?”). I’m sure there are tons of other instances you could come up with; these are just the immediate ones that come to my mind. Leona is also resentful about the idea of ever asking for Malleus’s help. He’d rather ask anyone else, even Malleus’s second in command, than ask the guy himself. Funnily enough, Lilia and Silver see these heated conversations as proof of Malleus and Leona’s friendship. I feel like this could also, in part, feed into Leona’s dislike of Malleus, as people having the wrong idea about your relationship can be irritating.

Now, Malleus does appear to care about maintaining amicable relations with representatives of other countries. Often it is he who instructs Sebek to apologize to Leona for being rude—two major instances of this occur in Malleus’s Ceremonial Robes vignettes and during Vargas Camp. He even personally (and happily) welcomes Leona to Diasomnia in his Ceremonial Robes vignettes, viewing Leona as no different than any other guest.

This goes into the realm of speculation (so please bear with me!!) but it could be said that Malleus has a very… unique view of friendship? So Lilia and Silver may not be too far off when they say that Leona and Malleus are chums in their own weird way. In Glorious Masquerade, Rollo poses a real threat to Malleus and to his people—yet when Malleus experiences genuine fear for the first time, he seems more excited at the novel feeling rather than cower as a result of it. Following the climax, Malleus still presents the song he had prepared as a gift of good will for NBC. He also proceeds to play with Rollo’s guilt to get him to agree to sharing a dance. And THEN Malleus says he looks forward to being invited again????? These are all quite friendly gestures for someone who put you and all your people in danger, my guy… 😂 So perhaps Malleus just gas a very different way of approaching friendships? Hard to say, but that’s some food for thought!

Leona and Malleus have had moments of amicability, so it’s totally possible for them to get along. This happens primarily in Leona’s Union Jacket vignettes; in them, Malleus gifts the birthday boy an antique book in an ancient language (Leona’s best subject). The two then talk about enjoying the freedom of walking around town without an attendant or some servants trailing after them. Being of a similar social status, they are able to understand one another to some extent.

This is going into another point of speculation, but I wonder if Leona and Malleus recognize their similarities beyond this interview. I certainly have; they’re both arrogant princes that deeply desire what the other prince has, and I feel that their animosity, in part, comes from this realization (whether conscious or unconscious). I certainly get the sense that some of Leona’s hatred of Malleus comes from seeing his own desires manifested in him—of being that coveted prince praised for his power, his people lavishing him with affirmations, a crown… All the things Leona doesn’t have.

[uplatterme]

a/n: did somebody say another writing style?? is this zandik? (idk). is this modern au? (idk). you can decide for yourselves really. dottie may not be a girl but he’s babygirl. therefore, onahole.

cw: sub!dottore, dom!reader (gn!terms,reader penetrates) | pwp, objectification, deepthroating (character!receiving), slight asphyxiation, crying, toys underneath clothes, humiliation, overstimulation, aphrodisiac, semi-public (why are there so many. i may have gone too wild, i fear.)

5 Important and Essential Steps To Remember Into Becoming the Perfect Onahole <3 (ft. Il Dottore)

1. Open Up! Nothing is too big. If you think it is, you’re simply not trying hard enough. Your throat is there for a reason!

Dottore’s in tears as he tries to take in your entire length, not even halfway. The edges of his mouth hurt, he can’t breathe, and worse of all, you’re judging him while he pathetically gags, saliva dripping all over his legs.

“Teeth, Dottore.” You say.

He sobs even more, the fact that he has to adjust and open up wider due to his sharp teeth is agonizing. He needs air, he wants to breathe deeper but he knows that’ll only mess things up, pulling you even deeper into his throat.

He uses his hand, pulling down his jaw. He can take you—he can—he can—he will!

Dottore practically almost faints once you’re all the way to his throat, he rolls his eyes, he can’t say anything or think at this point. His groaning is vibrating on your skin, if he tries to speak, he’ll die.

You drag your finger down his throat, you’re bulging, the soft skin barely doing anything to hide your curve.

“Such a perfect sleeve, my love.”

He can’t hear you anymore.

2. Always Be Ready! An onahole must always be ready for its owner’s use. Make sure you’re always lubed up and stretched out!

Dottore shudders as the vibrator shakes inside his walls, he wants to buckle over, it’s been so long since he’s taken it out. He wants to, but he can’t. What if you were to pull him away right now? He can’t be caught unprepared and dry! He has to please you after all.

His wetness damps his pants and he hastily tries to cover it with his laboratory gown. Each step ruins him, sending the vibrator even deeper. He breathes out his moans, it’s embarrassing. Climaxing due to walking like this in public? Dottore shivers as he thinks.

He needs a release, please. He begs silently, in whimpers, hoping that you were able to somehow magically hear them.

He has to assist himself on a wall, walking and finding somewhere he won’t be seen. The Doctor ends up in an alley, collapsing on his knees as he finishes, his legs shaking against one another. The vibrator ruthlessly pounds into him even after that, making him remember that he can’t turn it off. He trembles as he stands up, he can’t stay here.

Dottore licks his lips and smiles.

3. Be Quiet! As an onahole, you have no right to argue with your owner. Whether they fill you up or thrust ruthlessly, that is up to them!

Dottore’s body is limping as you keep pushing. He’s exhausted, how many hours…? The aphrodisiac has made it hard to tell.

His lab is ruined, secretions everywhere due to the different positions he has been in. Right now, he’s flipped over, unable to see your face, not even for comfort. He swallows down a cry, anybody could walk in right now. It’s been hours of gasping and panting, just so he avoids specific lewd noises that may come out of his mouth.

“W-When will we finish?” He asks.

“Be patient.”

Another vial is forced into his mouth. The immediate effects are already showing. His skin burns, touch him, please.

“Oh god…” He yearns.

He agreed to this, he tells himself. Still, he’s barely able to do anything except lay down on the laboratory table, on top of his very important studies, cumming all over them.

“S-Stomach’s full…I can’t—”

4. Stay Still! Where are you going? You aren’t done until your owner says so, silly! An onahole lets their holes be used in any way they want.

Dottore flushes in embarrassment. The bathroom stall had such a limited space, and yet he still grinds down on you. He silently cries, begging you to be done.

You don’t even bother to close the door. His reputation would be at risk here! He’s warm. When you called him here, he did not expect for such a thing to happen, and yet, here he is, bouncing up and down, liquids audibly mixing and painting his walls.

The toilet is clean and he may as well replace that instead with how much you’ve excreted into him. He does a far better job than that.

This is not for his pleasure, he allows his body to be used by you like this. Yet, he still wallows in it, as if it was him using you instead.

Dottore yelps once his body is pushed down by his waist. He chants out your name, pleading for no more due to how tired he is.

He hopes no one hears that.

Unfortunately for him, the sound of a toilet flushing follows.

5. Keep Practicing! In order to achieve perfection, you must have lots and lots of experience first. Once you’re confident in your skills, that’s when you can truly call yourself the perfect onahole.

Dottore’s insides have been carved out just for your shape. His body knows just what to do to please you.

Starting with his mouth, which can now open wide. Not gagging anymore as it’s filled to the brim. He uses his throat to his advantage, learning how he can effectively control it by studying the folds that move whenever he speaks. He still cries in pain, but he promises to do better next time! He’ll get there!

Then his thighs, you’ve used them so much to the point it feels as if nerves of pleasure have started to sprout there. His body arching just from a simple pinch of his skin. He can’t get enough of it.

Finally, his hole. Unclenching and clenching at the right rhythm, now knowing how to keep everything you give him inside, not letting a single drop spill. He can take you whole now, his guts having the pleasure to remember you well.

Such a perfect cocksleeve.

No matter how many times you’ve used him, it never gets old. Like every single time is perfect, a repeating cycle of pure pleasure for each of you.

Shit, you’re addicted.

[autisticlenaluthor]

Dress

Kara stays up until nearly three in the morning, listening to the sounds of the city below. She eavesdrops on arguing neighbors and house parties blaring music multiple streets away as she fights back yawns and flips through TV channels. It’s tedious and bordering on painful, but it keeps her from fixating on her bottomless pit of a rumbling stomach and the cramps that make it impossible to sleep.

Okay– so, maybe Kara hadn’t tried to sleep. But sleep hasn’t been coming easy these days and being in a new city in a new state with no plan and no friends other than her sister doesn’t exactly make it easy to calm the mind.

That’s why Kara stays awake and distracted. She tries not to think about how Alex is being forced to give up even more years of her life and even more space in her home to accommodate her sister’s comfort. She tries not to spiral over Lena and how she lives fifteen minutes away now– maybe even less– and how she’s going to have to suck it up and tell her about the move eventually. But most importantly, Kara refuses to think about the fact that she truly feels like she may implode from hunger.

It’s a pointless effort.

At 2:45, she finds herself staring blankly into the fridge as she tries to distinguish between what’s Alex’s and what’s Kelly’s. Her stomach twists into an even tighter knot, causing memories of her first few weeks on Earth to flood her.

Eliza had found the hoards of packaged apple slices from free school lunches and expired Uncrustables stashed in her dresser drawer, led by the trail of ants marching through the second floor. Eliza tried explaining that she didn’t need to worry– they were never going to run out of food, they’d always be able to buy more. But the reassurance just felt like a drop in the bucket of everything else Kara was supposed to be absorbing.

She hadn’t known then, how to explain that the money was never the problem. She knew Eliza had had enough of it– she saw it in the clothes Alex wore and the jewelry around the older woman’s neck. It was just that the moment the yellow sun hit Kara’s skin– it was like a black hole erupted within her. It was aching and screaming– begging to be filled.

Constantly, Kara tried. She doubled up portions on family meals and guzzled protein shakes in between. But it was never enough. Her appetite would always return and with it, the question:

What if this feeling never goes away?

Staring at her big sister’s half-empty fridge, Kara feels thirteen again.

She’s anxious in a way she can’t quite describe with a restlessness she knows will never leave. The only thing Kara can cling to is the notion that she needs to snack on something before she loses her mind and she can’t justify stealing groceries from her new roomies.

So she does the logical thing and goes to the nearest 24-hour mini-mart at 3:07 am– clad in flannel pajama pants and tie-dye crocs.

There, Kara finds herself paralyzed in front of another freezer. Only this time, it’s in the frozen food aisle with a plastic basket in her hand. She’s filled it with all the essentials– pumpkin spice pretzels, a box of pasta shaped like the characters from Arthur, three things of frozen potstickers, and four variations of Hot Pockets.

As Kara stares, she tries to remember what the hell it was she came here to buy. She knows it wasn’t the cartoon mac-and-cheese and it definitely wasn’t the pretzels that Alex is going to bully her for later. But all she can register is how loudly the lights are humming and the fact that every so often, the one on her left will flicker like the bulb is about to die.

Kara blows through closed lips and turns her head. Down one of the aisles, there’s something sparkly and purple. She follows the glimmer with narrow eyes until she finds its source: a long, tight dress. The kind of thing you wear to a gala.

Except the woman who wears it isn’t at a gala– she’s standing in front of a selection of cheap wine, holding one bottle by the neck as she examines the others on the shelves. She has dark hair which cascades down her shoulders and the gown accentuates her curves in all the right places.

Even without seeing her face, Kara knows she’s beautiful.

She can’t help the way that she stares at her, trying to get a better look. It’s something on any other day– she’d never allow herself to do. But she’s only ever known one beautiful brunette with the money for dresses like that one and reasons to wear them. The woman she still hasn’t found a way to be honest with, even after three painstakingly long years apart.

Kara takes a hesitant step forward and watches for just a moment longer, catching the way that she turns and tilts her head, causing raven hair to fall down in front of her. From the angle of their bodies– it’s impossible to get a glimpse of her face, but when the movement is followed by a familiar flipping sound, Kara can’t help it. She freezes.

Because she knows that sound. There’s only two people in the entire world whose heart rates she’s trained herself to notice: Alex and Lena’s.

Lena’s heart rate just piqued which means Lena Luthor is standing less than ten feet away from her.

At the realization, Kara drops her basket. It clatters to the floor and topples over– spilling its contents across the linoleum and Kara nearly goes down with it. Her pulse skyrockets and anxiety fuels her body with enough energy to send a rocket to the moon.

“Fuckfuckfuck.”

She scrambles to pick up the spilled groceries but as soon as she hits the ground– she can see Lena’s head whipping around to find the source of the commotion. Kara drops the boxes again and without a second thought– makes a run for it. She dashes straight into the cereal aisle, in such a panic she forgets about her super speed.

By the time she’s ducked down on the floor, gripping one of the shelves for dear life, she’s knocked over three things of cereal and four jars of peanut butter. Still, she peers her head just past the shelf– now only able to see the outline of Lena’s figure and the slightest sliver of her face.

She can see traces of red lipstick (when did Lena start wearing that?) and the outline of her nose. When Lena turns– Kara catches her face through the wine bottles. Rao, she could collapse again at the sight.

Her pale skin makes her hair glisten and her green eyes glimmer below a thin stroke of eyeliner. Her lips, painted that fierce red, are parted ever so slightly in confusion, and she knits her brow the same way she used to when they were kids.

Somehow, Lena looks exactly the same and completely different and Kara doesn’t know how to process it.

She’s seen the occasional selfie Lena sends when she goes somewhere new– like Paris or the Boston Science Museum and every so often, she’ll appear in one of Sam’s Facebook posts– posted with shot glasses at the bar, or kissing the cheek of an adorably tan toddler. But nothing compares to really seeing her.

Her presence now is a forceful reminder that Lena’s existence is true. It isn’t just an occasional light on Kara’s phone or a status update from a friend of a friend. Lena exists in the same world as her. She lives a life that Kara was once stupid enough to believe she’d always be a part of.

[lesbiansforboromir]

In a BoromirLives fanfic, Faramir must be forced to confront this line of his in particular; Whether he erred or no, of this I am sure: he died well, achieving some good thing. His face was more beautiful even than in life. It's vital to me that this is addressed. Because in Tolkien beauty is holy, they are intertwined inextricably, the holy will be beautiful.

Boromir did not live a beautiful holy life according to most, his life is not spoken of with uncomplicated worth by any but Denethor, Eomer, Theoden and Pippin (all either 'simple' or outwardly rebellious against god). But he did die a beautiful holy death, it is what most people praise him for and in Faramir's mystical dream where he sees Boromir's dead body floating down the river, this is his reaction. Boromir's corpse was more beautiful than his living body, because in death he was 'redeemed' and served his purpose in the great holy plan. He 'died well'.

This is horrifying right? It horrifies me when I read it. And I think it so concisely reveals how Faramir and many others viewed Boromir. I am essentially here to argue that this is all about piety, once again, yes I'm a one track record.

Gandalf, when hearing of Boromir's death from Aragorn, declares; It was a sore trial for such a man: a warrior, and a lord of men. Galadriel told me that he was in peril. But he escaped in the end. I am glad. It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us, if only for Boromir’s sake.

Now, what is Gandalf saying here? Boromir did not escape, he died. Does he mean he escaped corruption? Well, no, since apparently this 'escape' had something to do with Merry and Pippin and Boromir shook off the pull of the Ring long before he was sent to find them. What role did Merry and Pippin play in this 'escape'? Well, Boromir died for them, he had too, there was no other way out of that ambush. So by process of elimination the only thing the 'young hobbits' did that was 'for Boromir's sake' was... to be there so he could die for them, right?

And remember, his death did not actually save them or really help in any way, the hobbits are still taken and the Uruk-hai's downfall has nothing to do with Boromir. In fact Aragorn squandered any time Boromir might have given him to catch up to the Uruk-hai by spending hours on his funeral. So, the death alone is what is being called 'good' here, what is beautiful. Boromir dies and that is beautiful and something to be glad for, according to Gandalf and Faramir.

But why do they think this? Faramir has his 'alas for Boromir, whom I too loved' and Gandalf laments 'poor Boromir', so they have at least some pity for him. What was 'good' to them about Boromir dying? Well we all know this one don't we, it's the accepted narrative of it all, Boromir 'redeemed' himself with this deed. He tried to take the Ring, and for this crime he needed redemption that he gained through vainly giving up his life to try and save Merry and Pippin.

But, in fact, Boromir himself has a slightly different way of phrasing it. Boromir says, of his own death; ‘I tried to take the Ring from Frodo,’ [-] ‘I am sorry. I have paid.’

He paid for it. To Boromir, in this cosmic exchange, he chose wrongly and paid for the offence with his death. This wasn't redemption, it was spiritual commerce, crime and punishment. Which is a perspective that once again demonstrates Boromir's enduring lack of 'faith' or spirituality. The powers of the west and Eru may exist, but they exist to him as forces of nature, some fact of the world we all must just live with, not something that fills him with hope or brings him nobility or meaning or a 'higher purpose'. Boromir does not want to be closer to divinity, he does not want to be beautiful or noble, he wants his people to be safe.

But of course, this is entirely opposite to Faramir's perspective, and if not downright heretical then at least unfaithful. So, when alive, Boromir cannot achieve 'beauty' in Faramir's mind, because he is unfaithful. It is only when he is dead, when 'fate' draws him into this spiritually good 'end' that sees him give up his life for a holy quest, when Boromir's life is no longer defined by him but by his death, that he can be beautiful.

And bringing this all the way back around, there are two ways you could do this in a boromirlives fic. Either, Boromir comes back but he does not look like he did in Faramir's dream. He did not pay, he is still alive to define who he is and Faramir finds himself slowly drawn into this terrible psychological horror as he realises he misses his brother's death more than he missed his actual brother.

Or Faramir needs to be confronted with a brother who looks dead to him. Boromir has come back and to Faramir's eyes he looks exactly as he did in the dream, but now this corpse moves and speaks and can no longer be confined to one perfect conceptual moment. And this also horrifies him. It is for authors to decide if this is just an aspect of Faramir's perspective, or if Boromir actually 'came back wrong' as it were, he did pay but somehow he came back anyway.

[absolutebl]

These Weeks in BL - This Is Very Late, Or Right on Time depending on where you sit on the temporal debate team

Sorry I got distracted by work. In my defense: I was paid.

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

March 2024 Wk 1 & 2

Ongoing Series - Thai

Cherry Magic (Sat YouTube grey) ep 12 fin - Unfortunately, there was singing. But what can we do?

A soft charming warm hug of a show about crushes and mind reading and self worth, with no-fuss execution from a consummate team and an OG lead pair proving why they remain eternal and deserve to grow up. Look, here’s the thing, Cherry Magic is a great Thai BL in its own right not comparing it to any other iteration. But even when I do compare (and I've seen all the Cherries and read the manga) it still stands. This is a great show, a solid adaptation, and a pleasing take on the original yaoi. I personally like it better than the Japanese live action, but I think that’s because I just really like Thai BL and I LOVE TayNew. I doubted them for this and I shouldn’t have. They did a great job, as did the sides. I will say all the kissing was both present and better than any other iteration. As it should be. Definitely one for the rewatch rotation. 9/10 

Deep Night (Thurs iQiyi) ep 1 of 8 (10?) - Damn it, I love it. And I don't want to. It’s more classic BL than I thought it would be, and far less Only Friends or Playboyy. (Thank fuck.) We got a big cast and a lot of tropes going down out the gate, including SMITTEN popular hot guy versus nerd with secret identity. (Incidentally, Khem did drop into rude / informal when arguing with his Aunt and defending his ma. Bratty boy.) The leads have good chemistry (First always does), and everyone is very pretty. The main boy reminds me of J-Min's role (and look) in Love Class 2. I am entertained. (And faintly wonder why this isn't a MosBank vehicle.)

To Be Continued (Thai C3 Thailand grey) eps 1-3 of 8- High school sweethearts who had a bad break up reunite a decade later when both of them have full time jobs (celebrity & doctor). Dr Ji is a familiar face (hi Dream it's been a LONG time) and everyone is way too old for high school, but I guess I prefer this to child actors?

I'm enjoying it, actually, the cast may be older but they're solid as a result and the chemistry is on point for a pulp. Whether our celebrity is on the DL or cheating or something else remains to be seen but he sure is smitten. The way he LOOKS at Ji = hawt.

Frankly? Celebrity/doctor is a good pairing and this is a solid Thai BL. I hope we have a nice angsty reason for the break-up and we're not in another Promise situation. I like the sides too. Carry on, little show, I'm disposed to be pleased with you.

City of Stars (Fri iQIYI) eps 5-6 of 12 - I am enjoying it, actually. It’s incredibly silly. But I don’t really mind. STOP SINGING. 

1000 Years Old eps 3-4 of 12 - I love that these kids basically adopted a vampire pet. And one of them accidentally got a vampire boyfriend. This suddenly turned from a PNR into a family drama about domestic gays opening a food stall and I'm not mad about it. Nothing makes sense and I don't care because... rainbow umbrella!

A Secretly Love (Thai WeTV grey) eps 1 of 10 - I don’t love it. I make no bones about the fact that a pining uke rarely works for me, especially if he’s younger (cute supportive besties not withstanding), the power dynamic isn’t good. I always like Kimmon, he’s a stiff actor but v pretty. (I shallow af.) Still it’s time he started acting his age… literally. Having to watch ads again as well… for this? Ooof. I'm not sure I'm strong enough.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Perfect Propose (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 6 fin - It was very cute. I liked that there was uke instigated kisses. However I have some reservations on this one, much as I enjoyed it.

Adapted from Mayo Tsurakame’s manga, production team included Tadaaki Horai (My Love Mix-Up!) and Takeshi Miyamoto (Old Fashion Cupcake). Essentially Perfect Propose was about finding hope in a person when all other hope is gone. This show focuses on apathy, and perforce is somewhat apathetic and un-engaging especially as the pacing was off (and with only 6 episodes? now) However, this is countered by great visuals, good archetypes, and a clean story of childhood sweethearts reuniting after loosing their way in life. I landed on 8/10 mostly for a demanding younger seme and some great kisses. 

Unknown (Taiwan Tues Youku YouTube) eps 2-3 of 11 - Oh it’s great. I love it. I’m still worried by how gritty and "Taiwanese short-esk" it feels, but wow does this hit all my favorite taboo tropes and buttons. I also adore the little found fam, they the cutest gay older bros ever. The younger one who wants so bad to grow up and take care of the older one and pushes himself because into self sacrifice that’s the only model of love he has. ARGH. BOYS. Why so much pain, just smooch already! Sheesh. It's on YouTube for some of us, here's the schedule.

AntiReset (Taiwan Fri Viki/Gaga) eps 6-7 of 10 - They remain questionably cute, and that is probably going to be my ultimate review of this show. Awe cameo! (Hi babies, hope the ghosts are leaving you alone.) The irony does not escape me that the person in the relationship with the most emotional acumen is, in fact, the robot and not the human. I'm sure that's meant to be deep.

Love is Better the Second Time Around AKA Koi wo Suru nara Nidome ga Joto (Japan Gaga) ep 1 of 6 - A tortured second chance romance featuring a reported and a successful celebrity(?) academic. The kid actors look nothing like their adult counterparts, but they do look much younger. So, okay. Ah the utter embarrassment of first love. Oh I like it a lot, so very messy Japanese emo. Sigh. Here we go again.

Although I Love You and You AKA Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka (Japan Thurs Gaga) eps 8-9 of 10 - They are a cute couple. They both trying so hard and so confused and awkward and polite in trying to understand each other but TERRIBLE at communication. 

My Strawberry Film (Japan Thurs Gaga) eps 3-4 of 8 - I don’t know how I feel about this. But I do know it’s not my thing because it’s not BL. I’ll finish it because it’s short but… meh. 

It's done, ready to binge, but I have no time

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) 10 eps - will binge when I have any spare time. 2024 is crazy busy for me so far.

The Servant and the Young Master (Vietnam YouTube) - I will try when I have a window of time.

Began Beginning (Myanmar YouTube) - A Burmese BL? @heretherebedork vouched for it, so I will watch eventually.

It's airing but...

Dead Friend Forever (Thai iQIYI) - finished it's run and I won't be watching it. It's horror with BL elements and the ending, well, let's just say that's a "no thank you" from me.

Ossans Love Season 2 (Japan Gaga) - 5 years later, will anything have changed? This is Japan so… no. I'm not watching this. I dislike this franchise.

Time the series (Tue Gaga/YT) 10 eps - dropped it at ep 4.

Takumi-kun (2023) movie version AKA Takumi-kun Series 6: Nagai Nagai Monogatari no Hajimari no Asa released on FOD 3/5/2024. The original project was a 6 ep series. Having seen all the previous iterations and read the (terrible) yaoi I admit to being intrigued. If anyone finds eng subbed please let me know with a link in comments or in a DM? For those intersted in this show, probably the world's first true BL franchise I chat all about it here.

Gossip

James Supamongkon has withdrawn from the series Love Upon A Time and the NetJames pair is no more. Net Siraphop will continue with the historical BL project alongside a new partner. Can I interest you in Tod Techit... almost as pretty, legs for days...

The Complete Chronology of the Assault Case Against GMMTV Actor Win Pawin

I'm merely directing your attention to these articles, I do not wish for discussion of this content on this blog. Please don't ask for further info, I don't know the answer, follow the link that's why it's there.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Still Coming

3/21 Two Worlds (Thai IQIYI) 10 eps - announced here. One of those "he's dead Jim so time travel" thingames staring MaxNat. I'm over them but Asia flipping loves this trope and I do adore MaxNat. Phupha (Gun) and Khram (Nat) love each other but Phupha is murdered. Then Khram is pulled to a parallel world where, 12 years ago, Khram and Tai (Max) were in love. However, Khram was killed by Thai’s dad. Now Tai finds alter-Khram apparently alive. But then there is ALSO an alter-Phupha (played by Gun Thanawat who is Khom the repressed butler bodyguard from Unforgotten Night).

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

How flipping adorable is this vampire with his big gay umbrella? SUCH A DORK and we got more vampire dorks coming.

Thailand has found its vampire line and it's awkward and geeky and quite cheerful. 'Bout what we expected, to be fair. It's a good look for them.

And vampires.

In other news...

That's your random moment of thirst, Lim Jimin shirtless AKA my Just B bias (I mean, I could talk about how good his extensions are and how I love a husky voice in Kpop but really, just LOOK at him). I'm very very very shallow, remember? Full vid is here.

Why am I mentioning Lim Jimin (aside from the obvious)? If Just B doesn't break soon, I could some of them transitioning to BL. Jimin in particular would be a win for us, obvs.

Also, can we talk about Bain (my bias wrecker) KILLING it on Build Up? I had no idea he was that good. Anygay, this has been your Kpop end note.

Seriously tho, is ANYONE else watching Build-Up?

(Last week - well, 2 weeks ago)

Streaming services are listed how I'm (usually watching) which is with a USA based IP

The tag bragade: @doorajar

If ya wanna be tagged each week leave a comment and I will. Easy peesy.

[house-of-the-sun-project]

[ HoS ] ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AMULETS

The Isis knot is just as iconic as it is mysterious. It is unclear what this knot is meant to represent exactly: some Egyptologists argue it may have been a very ancient form of menstrual pad, while others believe it had religious or decorative purposes."

The Djed Pillar, representing Osiris' spine, is a powerful amulet used by both the living and the dead. Often made from various materials, it is also depicted in Egyptian art with a pair of hands and a feathered crown topped by the sun, symbolizing Osiris and divine resurrection.

The Ancient Egyptians believed the core of our intelligence and mind was the heart, rather than the brain. They couldn’t determine this latter's purpose, so during the mummification process, they discarded it, pulling it out through the nose with a hook, leaving only the essential vital organs to be preserved for the afterlife. In fact, the heart was regarded as both the source of emotions and feelings, and the seat of one's entire being—no wonder it was shaped like a vase!

Even those unfamiliar with Ancient Egyptian art recognize this iconic symbol. Over time, the Ankh, or 'Key of Life,' became synonymous with Egypt itself and its ancient religion. Some Egyptologists suggest that its shape may have been inspired by a knotted cloth, though its use was primarily decorative.

In some murals, strings of Ankh symbols were used to represent water, as it was the ultimate symbol of life for the Egyptians—everything originated from it, making the Ankh a fitting metaphor.

In other depictions, gods are shown 'spoon-feeding' pharaohs and the dead with an Ankh in their hands, symbolizing the soul being revived by the divine as it begins its journey to the afterlife."

One of the most common artifacts found by archaeologists during excavations, the Scarab is an iconic amulet that served many purposes for both the living and the dead.

In life, it was used as a seal, a protective amulet, or simply as jewelry, often worn as a ring or necklace, typically linked to a golden wire. In death, it was frequently placed around the neck and functioned as a protective charm for the heart, earning the name 'heart scarab.'

The scarab was the sacred animal of the god Khepri and symbolized the sun.

For the Ancient Egyptians, the soul was divided into several parts—nine in total, including the physical body. It was crucial that each of these parts made it to the afterlife, allowing the dead to be reborn in the Duat, the Egyptian underworld. The Ba, which represents our unique personality, was often placed on the mummy's chest so it could rest near the heart, another key component of the soul.

In Ancient Egypt, the papyrus stem was a common decorative element. Temple columns were often shaped to resemble this iconic plant. Its frequent appearance in Egyptian art was partly due to its significant color: green, the color of resurrection, sacred to the god Osiris. By placing a papyrus-shaped amulet around a mummy’s neck, the Egyptians believed it would ensure eternal youth for the soul in the afterlife.

The Eye of Horus, modeled after the left eye of the falcon god of kingship, is one of the most iconic symbols of Ancient Egypt. Found in numerous tombs, it was continuously produced from the late Old Kingdom through to the Roman period. It served both as an amulet to ward off evil and as a decoration on boats and mummies. Representing the moon and the righteous nature of the god, it is also closely connected to other benevolent deities, such as Osiris, Thoth, and Ma'at. Tied to the story of Horus's restored eye, it became a symbol of health and healing.

Used exclusively in funerary contexts, this peculiar amulet depicts the index and middle fingers of a right hand, which were believed to 'heal' the incision made by embalmers to remove the mummy’s organs during the mummification process.

[abtrusion]

Theories of the holy shit what did I just see back there on the street?

Because transmisogyny makes them so impossible to ignore, for at least the last 70 years transfeminized people have served as key material of Anglo-American gender/queer/trans theories, as laundered through anthropology, sexology, and uncited personal witnessing. The anaemic denial of this fact through snappy and surface-level distinctions between ‘queer’ and ‘trans’ and between different transfeminized groups has made it functionally impossible for these theories to seriously account for transf* life, and this failure is highly productive, because it allows for the continued use of both ‘premodern’ ‘third gender’ and ‘postmodern’ transgenderism as lobotomized material for the theories of other people. The last century of gender theoretic development has revolved around slowly refining methods of extracting transfeminized peoples’ insight, forgetting and re-introducing them to their field over and over again to frame them as perpetual novelties, leading to a pernicious form of feminist amnesia that repeats over and over again.

1 . MARGARET MEAD (1949)

The work begins with Margaret Mead, the ‘most famous anthropologist of our century’ (Behar and Gordon 1996), who made her career studying indigenous groups in Samoa and New Guinea, then joined the larger anthropological effort to inform the US Government’s genocidal re-education campaigns against Indigenous American tribes. She later enjoyed a prodigious career as a public intellectual and shifted to more explicitly feminist writing which extensively influenced the movements of the 60s and 70s. Mead argued that essentially all sex-gender roles were culturally determined, and used the specter of the transfeminized homosexual-transvestite both to make that argument and to advocate for gender abolition.

This can be seen most clearly in Mead’s 1949 book Male and Female: a Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. Mead chronologically traces individual gender development through an ethnographic-sexological narrative, beginning with ‘first learnings’ that a child receives primarily through observation. Then the family comes in, and the transvestite comes with it, existing as the primary motive (alongside Freudian sexual attachment) which motivates gendered socialization:

Too great softness, too great passivity, in the male and he will not become a man. The American Plains Indians, valuing courage in battle above all other qualities, watched their little boys with desperate intensity, and drove a fair number of them to give up the struggle and assume women’s dress. (Mead 1949)

Mead argues that “fear that boys will be feminine in behavior may drive many boys into taking refuge in explicit femininity,” but makes a distinction between this identification and what she calls ‘full transvestitism,’ the culturally-specific recognition of that status. This differential leads her to conclude that the physical traits seen as markers of ‘gender inversion’ are culturally specific, and that what is understood as physical sex (then existing on a ‘spectrum’ model) is therefore partially socially determined.

For Mead, gender must be abolished precisely because of the fact that she could even make this argument. As she says,

Only a denial of life itself makes it possible to deny the interdependence of the sexes. Once that interdependence is recognized and traced in minute detail to the infant’s first experience of the contrast between the extra roughness of a shaven cheek and a deeper voice and his mother’s softer skin and higher voice, any programme which claims that the wholeness of one sex can be advanced without considering the other is automatically disallowed.

The desperate need to reproduce these distinctions, to make sex clear and visible and obvious, leads Mead to ultimately argue for a gender abolition that rests on complementary sex-roles. The main benefit of this approach for Mead is the complete eradication of sex-gender ‘confusion’ and its incarnation in transfeminized people, so associated precisely because of their intense usefulness as a tool for undermining sex-gender distinctions. So Mead sees the construction of physical and social gender by using transfeminized people as a lens, but because of her own disgust she can only fix gender by unseeing it again, by displacing gender to ‘real’ physical sex and protecting herself by breaking the tool. This, unsurprisingly, leaves her exactly where she started.

2. BETTY FRIEDAN (1963)

The feminist theorists that came after Mead directly confronted this reversion to ‘complementary sex’ logics, most notably in Betty Friedan’s foundational work The Feminine Mystique. Friedan discusses the ‘paradox’ of Mead’s influence, the strange combination of her exposure of ‘the infinite variety of sexual patterns and the enormous plasticity of human nature’ and her ‘glorification of women in the female role – as defined by their sexual biological function.’ In the middle, Friedan cites a page-long quote describing a point of ambivalent warning in Mead’s writing:

The difference between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature… Sometimes one quality has been assigned to one sex, sometimes to the other. Now it is boys who are thought of as infinitely vulnerable and in need of special cherishing care, now it is girls… Some people think of women as too weak to work out of doors, others regard women as the appropriate bearers of heavy burdens “because their heads are stronger than men’s” … Some religions, including our European traditional religions, have assigned women an inferior role in the religious hierarchy, others have built their whole symbolic relationship with the supernatural world upon male imitations of the biological functions of women. (emph added by me)

...Are we dealing with a must that we dare not flout because it is rooted so deep in our biological mammalian nature that to flout it means individual and social disease? Or with a must that, although not so deeply rooted, still is so very socially convenient and so well tried that it would be uneconomical to flout it…

...We must also ask: What are the potentialities of sex differences? … If little boys have to meet and assimilate the early shock of knowing that they can never create a baby with the sureness and incontrovertibility that is a woman’s birthright, how does this make them more creatively ambitious, as well as more dependent upon achievement?

Friedan attributes this ultimate focus on sexual difference to Mead’s Freudianism: she argues that Mead’s need to approach culture and personality through sexual difference, combined with her anthropological understanding that ‘there are no true-for-every-culture sexual differences except those involved in the act of procreation’ (Friedan and Quindlen 1963), combines to cause her to inflate the cultural importance of the reproductive role of women. Friedan intensely rebukes this reification of reproduction as another component of the ‘feminine mystique’ (very close to the modern ‘divine feminine’), advocating for programs which enable women to reject the mystique and housewife status and to seek education and employment, to combat the problem ‘which had no name’ but takes shape through spikes in female ‘sex-hunger’ and ‘overt manifestations’ of passive male homosexuality, both understood as ‘children acting out the sexual phantasies of their housewife-mothers.’ In a paradoxical return to Freudianism, Friedan characterizes husbands unwilling to let their wives work as being seduced ‘by the infantile phantasy of having an ever-present mother’ (the Freudian homosexuality-signifier), associating antifeminism with passive homosexuality with femininity which the aspiring feminist has escaped, learning to compete “not as a woman, but as a human being.”

3. THE MULTIPLICATION OF TRANSFEMINIZED SUBJECTS

As we can see, transfeminized subjects are frequently used as signs of system collapse, hypervisible enough to be easy examples and potent enough to rhetorically corrode existing sex-gender systems in preparation for the author’s own vision. Once a piece is published, these examples are usually then forgotten, assumed as scaffolding for the real theory; but the rhetorical strawmen of these transfeminized subjects still remain, trapped implicitly in the text, and they bleed into one another with every new addition to the corpus, every call to action invoking a new transfeminized archetype.

So far we have seen Mead’s anthropological-orientalist framing of ‘transvestitism’ among the anthropological Other and Friedan’s psychological framing of ‘passive homosexuality’ in the United States. The increasing visibility of adult ‘transsexuality,’ somewhat disjoint from the developmental sexology Gill-Peterson (2017) discusses because of its visibility in high-profile cases like Christine Jorgensen, was likewise framed for theory. Harold Garfinkel’s (1967) book Studies in Ethnomethodology, which described methods for observing ‘the objective reality of social facts as an ongoing accomplishment,’ used an intersex woman named Agnes as an avenue to expose how everyday social facts are constructed. Agnes was an ideal exemplar because her insistence on getting HRT and being seen as a woman was considered psychologically normal: “Such insistence was not accompanied by clinically interesting ego defects. These persons contrast in many interesting ways with transvestites, trans-sexualists, and homosexuals.” Of course, Garfinkel was later notified that Agnes did not have an intersex condition, and he then noted that ‘this news turned the article into a feature of the same circumstances it reported, i.e. into a situated report.’

Anyways, now it’s time for yet another transfeminized subject: the ‘transsexually constructed lesbian feminist.’

4. JANICE RAYMOND (1979)

As with her predecessors, Raymond sees analytical power in her particular transfeminized group, arguing that “transsexualism goes to the question of what gender is, how to challenge it, and what reinforces gender stereotypes in a role-defined society.” But she also has some concerns for ‘transsexual women,’ initially assumed heterosexual, none of which are particularly novel or interesting. Now that she’s writing in an environment dominated by Friedan’s mandate towards shedding femininity, feminist amnesia makes it novel to regurgitate Margaret Mead’s responses: that “male transsexualism may well be a graphic expression of the destruction that sex-role molding has wrought on men,” and that “men recognize the power that women have by virtue of female biology and the fact that this power, symbolized in giving birth, is not only procreative but multidimensionally creative” (Raymond 1979).

Her analysis of (new archetype) ‘transsexually-constructed lesbian feminism’ is much more interesting. While Raymond can understand heterosexual transsexual women as ‘reinforcing gender stereotyping’ by pulling primarily from medical archives already hegemonized by gatekeeping and passing requirements, the transsexual women in the lesbian-feminist movement achieved a certain degree of personal contact and visibility that undermined ‘hegemonizing’ logics. So Raymond uses three main arguments: an essentialist appeal to fundamental ‘maleness,’ a red-scare-esque appeal to transsexual lesbian feminists as ‘court eunuchs’ bent on monitoring and controlling feminist spaces, and finally, an argument that transsexual lesbian feminists are fundamentally epistemically corrosive to lesbian feminist spaces:

Whereas the lesbian-feminist crosses the boundary of her patriarchally imposed sex role, the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist is a boundary violator. This violation is also profoundly mythic, for as Norman O. Brown writes of Dionysus, he as the ‘‘mad god who breaks down boundaries.’’

Contrary to contemporary transmisogynistic discourse which frames trans lesbians as personal threats to women in lesbian-feminist spaces, this violation takes its form not in any particular act but in the act of passing, the deconstructive question this existence seemingly automatically places on lesbian-feminist spaces:

One of the most constraining questions that transsexuals, and, in particular, transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists, pose is the question of self-definition—who is a woman, who is a lesbian-feminist? But, of course, they pose the question on their terms, and we are faced with answering it.

Raymond notes with some frustration that this transsexual question has been discussed ‘out of proportion to their actual numbers,’ using up valuable feminist energy, and frames this as a symptom and crime of transsexual lesbianism itself. The trans question is transsexual women; like the theorists before her, she sees transfeminized people as a gaping hole in the gendered world, but now they’re inside her house, feeding “off woman’s true energy source, i.e., her woman-identified self,” and inherently stand to break “the boundaries of what constitutes femaleness,” to dissolve lesbian-feminism itself.

I want to stress two main points in all of this. First, Raymond understands studying transsexualism as a crucial tool for answering ‘the question of what gender is’ and ‘how to challenge it.’ Second, Raymond’s anxiety about transsexual lesbian-feminists moves away from specific actions and towards the ‘penetration’ inherent in their existence in these spaces at all, the understanding that transsexual women are inherently corrosive to lesbian-feminist movements. These two points are clearly linked. Raymond understands transsexuality as a form of epistemic gender acid, something that can be useful at arm’s length but is deadly up close. Of course, the transfeminized people she discusses were not necessarily invested in asking the Trans Question themselves; trans women attended lesbian-feminist events like Michfest before and after their trans exclusion policies, and regardless of ‘passing’ many people enjoyed a form of don’t ask don’t tell (Tagonist 1997). But within these spaces, the Trans* Question long predated the actual existence of transfeminized people – so once they arrived, the Question and person were fundamentally linked. Trans theorists have negotiated this association extensively, but that’s not the topic of this essay, so I’ll leave you with some sources (Stryker 1994; Stone 1992) and move to Butler.

5. JUDITH BUTLER (1990)

This work has been done already by Vivian Namaste (2020), who argues that “contemporary discussions of Anglo-American feminist theory, exemplified in Butler’s work, begin with the Transgender Question as a way to narrow our focus to the constitution, reproduction, and resignification of gender.” This singular focus on the ‘Transgender Question’ has made it functionally impossible for Anglo-American feminist theory to consider the outsized role of work, particularly sex work, in motivating the discrimination and violence against transfeminized people of color: “framing violence against transsexual prostitutes as ‘gender violence’ is a radical recuperation of these events and their causal nature-a violence at the level of epistemology itself.”

Namaste attributes this focus on featureless ‘gender violence’ to a crippling lack of empiricism, a lack of researcher-subject equity, and an exclusion of subject knowledges. She provides an effective power-based solution to this epistemic violence – that feminist theorists should talk with the subjects of their theory and give them some measure of power in the transaction – a sort of endpoint analysis which means she doesn’t need to consider too much of the internals of the system she’s challenging. That’s a good idea for her work, but with the benefit of history we can move differently. The next section synthesizes Butler, Friedan, Mead, and Raymond together to provide a functionalist analysis of the feminist theoretic use of transfeminized people. What are the benefits of using transfeminized people as an epistemic tool in feminist theory? What are the dangers of using this epistemic tool, and how does feminist theory manage those dangers?

6. PATTERNS OF EXTRACTION AND DEFENSE

Looking past Butler and further into the past reveals that transfeminized people have been crucial not just to the feminist theory of the past 20 years, but have served as exemplars as far back as the 1940s. The ‘Trans* Question,’ which frames transfeminized people as the most visible signifier and most horrifying symptom of social gender, has been cyclically used in a form of feminist cultural amnesia:

A transfeminized group serves as a hypervisible example to 'deconstruct' social gender

Transfeminized deconstruction bloats beyond itself, undermining 'sex traits' or 'femaleness' or some other foundational category of feminist analysis.

Reconstruction of gender as 'biological sex,' alliance between feminist theorists and men of all stripes by arguing that post-gender eradication of transfeminized people will (a) allow men to be feminine without becoming women or (b) destroy femininity entirely.

New-generation feminist theorists realize their predecessors have reinvented social gender. Return to (1).

As Margaret Mead’s work shows, the use of transfeminized groups to deconstruct both physical and social gender has been observed regardless of transmedicalization. This helical pattern has a few general properties:

Each cycle introduces a distinct transfeminized group, positioning it against prior groups as uniquely suitable for analysis, but simultaneously blurs the new group into the existing melange.

This "Trans* Queston" is almost entirely devoid of group-specific context and rooted in transmisogyny, which positions them as horrifying and visible symptoms of social gender.

Each "Trans* Question" initially exposes social gender, but constantly threatens to dissolve other categories or even the theorist's own writing as socially constructed, against the theorist's will.

Each new cycle demonstrates near-complete historical amnesia as to the relevance of transfeminized people in the prior theoretical move.

So the “Trans* Question” allows for the basic feminist move, asserting that gender is socially constructed, but if improperly controlled it stands to dissolve virtually any definition feminist theorists try to build. To be clear, I do not believe in the total deconstruction of categories – you need definitions, even ones you acknowledge as imprecise, to say anything at all. But transfeminized people probably have pretty solid ideas about gender, having to, you know, live with it. The alienated ‘Trans Question*’ has none of this insight, appearing instead as a gaping epistemic hole in the world, and so feminist theorists are forced to come up with complicated quarantining measures to keep the Question from spilling over.

What jeopardizes feminist theory’s use of the Question? One answer (among many) comes by looking at Mead, who concluded that physical characteristics seen as ‘sex traits’ were socially constructed by looking at the culture-specific construction of what she called ‘full transvestitism.’ In this case, the Question undermined sex when the social position of transfeminized subjects were seen as simultaneously normative and anti-normative, existing in some normative ‘social’ role while being understood as distinct from non-transfeminized subjects via another ‘natural’ axis. The fact that these splits were made differently across different transfeminized groups undermined the distinction between social and ‘natural/biological’ aspects of gender, and because the alienated Question provides no means of making anything solid out of any of this, Mead retreated to the womb.

So understanding that the Question allows for the deconstruction of gender, and that it overgrows when multiple (studied as) semi-normative transfeminized groups are cross-compared with one another, we can consider aspects of contemporary feministqueertrans theory that enforce the epistemic isolation and normativization/antinormativization of transfeminized groups. The knots this ties in feminist theories seem relevant both to the ‘why does trans theory exist’ question posed by Chu & Drager (2019) and to the challenges and limitations of applying queer/trans theory to groups outside the anglosphere (Chiang 2021, Savci 2021). I’ll discuss that more in another essay.

SOURCES

Behar, Ruth, and Deborah A. Gordon. 1996. Women Writing Culture. First Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chiang, Howard. 2021. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific. Columbia University Press.

Chu, Andrea Long, and Emmett Harsin Drager. 2019. “After Trans Studies.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 6 (1): 103–16. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7253524.

Friedan, Betty, and Anna Quindlen. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. Reprint edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. 1st edition. Cambridge Oxford Malden,MA: Polity.

Gill-Peterson, Jules. 2017. “Implanting Plasticity into Sex and Trans/Gender.” Angelaki 22 (2): 47–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2017.1322818.

Mead, Margaret. 1949. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. First Edition. William Morrow.

Namaste, Viviane. 2020. “Undoing Theory: The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” In Feminist Theory Reader, edited by Carole McCann, Seung-kyung Kim, and Emek Ergun, 5th edition. New York, NY London: Routledge.

Raymond, Janice G. 1979. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. New York: Teachers College Press.

Savci, Evren. 2021. Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics Under Neoliberal Islam. Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press Books.

Stone, Sandy. 1992. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 10 (2 (29)): 150–76. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-10-2_29-150.

Stryker, Susan. 1994. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (3): 237–54. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1-3-237.

Tagonist, Anne. 1997. “Sister Subverter Diary August ’97.” Unapologetic: The Journal of Irresponsible Gender.

[anti-lies]

Attention: After Talking to Another Real System, I've Come to Believe That the Endo Community is Being Infiltrated and Controlled by CIA Operatives

I need everyone to be aware and be vigilant because the threat is real. The endogenic community was invented to divide us and keep us distracted.

Having combed over several big potential CIA operatives, I've narrowed the field down to four possibilities. Remember that any or all of these could be CIA operatives, but I'm certain at least one has to be.

Possible CIA plants

@guardianssystem: This system claims to be a pro-endo "traumagenic" system as a way to give themselves authority. They have activity across multiple websites including TikTok and X. They're notable for compiling this document of "sources" to prove endos exist. This document is everywhere. It has suspiciously become the main compilation of endo sources that they love to link to at every turn.

@cambriancrew: They're a tulpa "system" who runs r/tulpas. For anyone who doesn't know, "tulpamancy" is essentially a form of brainwashing. Tulpamancers say they can change a person's brain to give them headmates, and they've convinced multiple "doctors" to back them. All of this sounds like MK Ultra stuff. Cambrian Crew, besides being an outspoken endo, appears to be well connected, and used those connections to help organize an AMA on r/tulpas. In this AMA, their CIA-paid doctors claimed to have conducted brain scans on tulpamancers that showed changes in brain activity when their tulpas were possessing limbs.

@sysmedsaresexist: A nefarious saboteur, Sysmedsaresexist posed as a prominent anti-endo voice for YEARS, building up a massive anti endo following on this site. Between their SysmedsAreSexist and JustAnotherSyscourse blogs, they practically single-handedly ran the "#shit endos say" tag dedicated to mocking endos. But then all of a sudden, they turn? And like CambrianCrew, SysmedsAreSexist appears to have a close relationship to "doctors," posting a screenshot of an email from Colin Ross, an expert in DID, that appears to support the existence of endogenic systems. All of this looks like a years-long psyop to gain people's trust and convert them.

@sophieinwonderland: Finally, that brings us to Sophie, another tulpa "system." She also has her own page filled with endo "sources" though not as detailed or widely disseminated as Guardians'. The more I looked into this one, the more disturbed I became. Sophie is, as far as I can tell, the system who started "The Future is Plural," the mass movement which we all know seeks to traumatize children en masse and give them dissociative disorders. She also openly brags about teaching people methods to dissociate and hallucinate, says that she believes she can rewire people's brains, and cheerfully is arguing in favor of propaganda.

Please, whatever you do, do not engage with these people. Not only to avoid harassing them, but because if they are indeed CIA operatives, it may not be safe to do so directly. I may be putting myself at risk just by talking about this aloud, and I believe they're already trying to discredit me, but I feel someone has to talk about this.

Community input in finding the spies is incredibly important.

Knowing all of the facts, I'd like to know who you all think is most likely a CIA operative.

[just-j-really]

Concept that grabbed me and wouldn't let me go:

Dreamling soulmate AU, only they're not soulmates.

I have ideas for the canon timeline, but for the sake of argument, let's go with a modern AU. Dream and Hob aren't friends, exactly, but they're in the same friend circle, so they see each other fairly often. And one night, Dream's been dragged out drinking with some friends, and he overhears a very drunk Hob saying that soulmates are stupid, HE'S not going to go along with it, he'll fall in love with whoever he wants! So Dream (a hopeless romantic) makes some sort of bet with him, that when he finds his soulmate he'll be blissfully happy with her.

After that, whenever they run into each other at other's friends' events Dream will ask Hob if he's met his soulmate (Eleanor, according to the messy handwriting on Hob's arm), and Hob will be like "Nope! But I've got a job at this weird startup!" and then talk at him for three hours. The bet goes from a bet they're taking seriously to an excuse to talk to each other to a Weird Bit that's an essential part of their friendship.

And they are, genuinely, friends at this point, which is why it's such a betrayal for Dream when Hob answers his joking "found your soulmate yet?" with a quiet, "I think I might have. He's been asking me that question for like a year now."

Dream does not take this well. He believes in soulmates, wholeheartedly. He can't figure out a single interpretation of Hob's declaration that doesn't leave him feeling used: best-case scenario Hob legit believes what he's saying (but is still using Dream in this obviously doomed experiment of his), worst-case scenario Hob's noticed that Dream is attracted to him (even if that will never ever go any further than meaningless attraction because they are not soulmates) and is deliberately trying to take advantage of him to prove his point.

They argue. Dream storms off.

Somewhere in here, Dream has a relationship with his Actual Literal Soulmate, Alianora. It is extremely Messy, and she breaks it off because they may be soulmates but clearly this is not working. She's not the first person ever to end things with their soulmate, but it's extremely rare, and the fallout is shit-awful for both of them because everyone in their lives is trying to figure out whose fault it was, never mind that the answer was "nobody's- they met under really awful circumstances and the specific cocktail of that and the pressure, both internal and external, they were under to Be Perfectly Happy Together Forever just. Poisoned their relationship and they didn't deal with it until it exploded and by then it was too late."

Eventually, Dream and Hob resolve their argument, complete with an inn-building-equivalent Big Gesture from Hob. Their relationship goes back to the way it was, mostly, except that Dream is undeniably aware that Hob is sad and pining after Dream and trying to hide it from him. And Hob being sad is Basically the Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen.

Dream is... more aware of the implications of that thought than he'd like to be.

And once he's noticed that it's really, really hard not to notice how gorgeous Hob is when he smiles, the way his heart flutters whenever Hob calls him a nickname or makes sure to grab Dream a coffee when he gets one for himself, the fact that he'd be perfectly happy sitting and listening to Hob talk for hours...

And things are different now. Dream's soulmate doesn't want him, he's not betraying her if he starts a doomed relationship with someone else. Hob will be happy. The only person getting hurt here will be Dream, when Hob inevitably meets his soulmate. He's setting himself up to get hurt, yes, but at least he'll get to be happy with Hob before that.

So one night he very tentatively asks if Hob still meant what he said, about Dream being his soulmate. Hob's like "Crap I thought I was hiding it I'm so sorry I don't want you to be uncomfortable."

Dream's like "You are not actually that subtle. But I'm. Glad. You still feel that way."

It takes Hob a few seconds and a fairly terrible emotional rollercoaster to figure out what Dream meant by that, and Dream is not good about clarifying. But when he does he asks Dream on a date, and Dream agrees, and before he knows what's hit him Hob's moved in with him and is very cautiously hinting around about engagement rings and he can't possibly be in love with Hob, right? Whatever's between them is too easy, too natural, too much like they added romance to their existing friendship and somehow it worked perfectly and-

Oh. Shit.

And just when Dream realizes he's invested- not just invested, committed, this was Absolutely Not how the story's supposed to go and it's terrifying but he desperately wants it anyway- just when he's got something to lose-

Hob meets Eleanor.

And almost immediately asks if Dream would mind him explaining things to her one-on-one, since he thinks it would go more smoothly that way. Dream says he doesn't, and braces himself. It's not that he thinks Hob is lying to him. He 100% trusts that Hob has made this meeting to turn Eleanor down.

He's just also 100% certain that the moment Hob has a conversation with his soulmate he'll realize just how important a soulmate is, that Dream was right and that next to the person he's destined for, Dream means nothing to him.

When Hob gets back from the meeting he's happier than Dream's seen him in months, maybe ever, and Dream braces himself.

But the first thing Hob does after closing the door is kiss Dream, for several minutes.

And the second thing he does is excitedly tell Dream, "It went really well! She said I'm not worth it!"

And Dream's like "...what."

And Hob explains that he'd told Eleanor that he was very sorry, but he already had a soulmate, and she'd been upset but essentially told him "Yeah fine, if you're this adamant about not wanting a soulmate it is not at all worth it for me to pursue anything," with a grudging sort of understanding.

And Dream's like "...what."

And they go back and forth for a bit until finally Dream's like "But she's your SOULMATE. You're not even going to TRY to have something with your soulmate in order to stay with a man who is so bad at romance his soulmate left him."

And Hob's like "I've been saying for years now that you're my perfect other half, soulmates and destiny be damned, and I meant it. You're perfect, and I'm not letting you go for anything."

And Dream... still can't entirely believe in an undying non-soulmate romance the way Hob does. But he wants to, and he trusts Hob enough to try. And several years later they're married, maybe talking about kids, and in some mundane little domestic moment Dream realizes he does entirely believe in this now, in a way that snuck up on him gradually.

And he tells Hob he's won the bet.