#it depends on your performance

[nothingwronghere]

[waitineedaname]

mxtx characters who, in my humble butch opinion, should be butch

Luo Binghe: listen. look me in the eyes. in a genderswap situation, Binghe should get to be butch. one of the key themes in SVSSS is gender, and one of the things that distinguishes SVSSS!Binghe from PIDW!Binghe is that he's not the hypermasculine protagonist and instead is allowed to enjoy more feminine things (like being Shizun's housewife). that's why he's specifically called Bing-mei and it's also why im on my transfemme Binghe soapbox all the time, but that's a whole other topic. what im saying is if we're reversing the gender situation, then fem!Binghe in SVSSS should get to enjoy more masculine things. it's what she deserves. she strikes me as the kind of butch that gets a thrill out of doing gentlemanly things like giving SQQ her coat when she's cold. she should be the Bing-di to PIDW's Bing-jie

Shang Qinghua: this one is deeply self-indulgent projection but don't fucking worry about that okay. SQH is a very specific flavor of low effort butch nerd. SQH is the cookie monster pajamas to butch pipeline. SQH cuts her own hair with regular scissors for convenience and Shen Yuan is dying to get her to just buy some goddamn clippers. SQH is running off of four red bulls and spite. She inexplicably has game and she's just as confused about this as you are

Xie Lian: imagine this for me. you go to one of those volunteering events where you're cleaning trash out of a creek or something. there is a woman there in cargo pants or maybe overalls, something with a shit ton of pockets. she has not shaved in months, maybe years. her hair is in the messiest bun possible, or maybe tied back under a baseball cap. she is somehow the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. after taking away all the trash and informing everyone how to sort the recycling, she is picked up by another woman who appears to be the definition of high camp. you leave this encounter feeling like you might have been converted to something. perhaps to lesbianism. this is what an encounter with butch Xie Lian is like.

[weatherfey]

I think a lot about the way Dorian used to see Cyrus as the perfect older brother, the perfect prince; the way Dorian felt free to go and find himself because Cyrus was capable and dependable and ready to be a leader. That isn’t the Cyrus we see! But I think it’s a lot more interesting, for both Cyrus and Dorian, to take that seriously. They’re princes, and we don’t know what that means because we haven’t seen their home, but socially a court is an elaborately constructed farce. And of course it can be easier to be competent in any familiar environment, but I also think it’s easier to know how you fit within a court environment specifically because there is an overwhelming number of factors to define yourself against and they all have expectations of you, and if they aren’t suffocating you like some kind of spider’s web then it might be perfect, like being a star in a constellation, or just the right puzzle piece. I think it’s reasonable to think that Cyrus was something like who Dorian thought he was, at home; except that Cyrus, like Dorian, wanted to choose the things he’s defining himself against. And I think it’s meaningful that he got swindled in the immediate aftermath of discarding that constellation of puzzle pieces. He was a fool (beloved), but it happened in the first blush of freedom, when he was just starting to figure out who he was or wanted to be without all that defined expectation, which is also - not coincidentally - the state Dorian was in when the spider queen sunk her fingers into his heart and twisted his alignment. The ‘hello world! uh oh’ of it all is something they had in common.

(Something they both had in common with Opal, too.)

I do think it’s interesting to look at Dorian’s sense of responsibility in light of this. I almost think Orym was a kind of north star for Dorian through parts of EXU prime, and I ship them, but it really felt like one of the things that made him able to reject the spider queen is that Orym needed him to. I think he wanted to be someone Orym could rely on, but I think Orym’s regard mattered to him because they genuinely had that protective urge in common - the pathway the spider queen used to skitter in was Dorian’s desire to protect his friends. And that drive to protect added a lot of poignancy to the in-universe reason that Dorian couldn’t return to bell’s hells after Cyrus’s debts were repaid, not just because Cyrus was still getting his legs under him but also because Opal needed help. That’s responsibility, again - he’s finishing what they started. Duty, obligation, but this time he’s chosen who and what he’s beholden to. Like maybe he’s chosen a new version of a puzzle piece that he might have thought he was throwing out entirely when he chose freedom and walked away from home.

I loved that Fearne’s vision also haunted Dorian; he misses her, and it also feels like a solid way to illustrate the spider queen’s effect on Dorian, that the danger of his own corruption has rarely been something he had the luxury to think about. His friends have always needed him. I don’t know if he had time to process his aborted fall during his time in Zephrah, or if there’s still something underneath, but I think it’s telling that this fear doesn’t look like Opal, the one literally bleeding ichor from her forehead; it predates that, it started before Opal was the one to worry about.

And I think he knows he didn’t fail them - Cyrus, Opal, Fy’ra - accidental thunder damage notwithstanding - but, with the way he felt through that suggestion spell and its aftermath, I don’t really know what to make of his abandoning Dariax. It’s a little hard to look at that and not see a drive to isolate. Determined to leave him with a good memory, but most of all, to leave. He started that one-shot interlude having just admitted to himself that he was longing to be Somewhere Else, but I almost wonder if he still would have gone back to bell’s hells if Orym hadn’t asked.

(God, the suggestion spell. The way they processed it was hurtful to me personally. Dariax immediately shifting from ‘won’t leave Opal!’ to ‘let’s go! Opal has a plan’ kind of broke my heart, and I actually think that the spell could have worked on Dorian by just making what was really happening feel reasonable - the last shred of your friend is trying to save you, and you can’t save her from anything except becoming your murderer, so you should do that. But the spell can’t make sense out of abandoning Cyrus’s body, so Dorian just goes numb with grief and rage. Mass suggestion is 24 hours. That is 24 hours of numbness, and rage, and walking, and walking, and walking, and every once in awhile Dariax’s voice, friendly and steady and sure, ‘Opal has a plan.’ And at the end of it the ability to feel returns, but he’s so tired, and he hurts, and everything hurts too much to think about, and poor Dariax probably stops in his tracks, just ‘Dorian? What was Opal’s plan?’)

And he really was so angry. It’s interesting to wonder if that’s still under the surface. He immediately turned to levity - for their sake, and his own - but that moment where the group tells him who killed Will and Derrig, and Robbie instantly wrote down Otohan’s name, didn’t just read like a player taking notes, to me, it read like Dorian putting a name in a ledger. I think it’s easy to let that go because he learns that she’s dead in the very next moment, but I think Dorian felt a weird kind of relief for that half-second, because so much of his anger at what happened to Cyrus and Opal was from being forced to acknowledge that there wasn’t anyone easy to blame, except perhaps a god; and blaming a god is like blaming the universe. What a relief, however short lived, to be faced with a problem you can solve.

[shannonsketches]

Do y’all ever think about how Vegeta’s only ever mad at Freeza for what happened to his planet and he’s never mad at Freeza for what happened to him because I think about that a lot

[laughing-drawing-aces]

okay i absolutely hate the thinking that some people (ronancers) have of ‘why are you not shipping this w|w ship because of steve who is a man why are you depending a man’s feelings on a w|w ship’ maybe it’s because regardless of your gender or your sexuality screwing over and betraying a friend is exactly that! it has NOTHING to do with sexuality or gender! SCREWING OVER A FRIEND IS SCREWING OVER A FRIEND REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU IDENTIFY AS!!

[n3felibata]

I don't think some people realize how bad the power imbalance between Blitz and Stolas would be if it becomes a boss/employee ship

I understand it's not as bad as the power imbalance they had in the beginning of the series... but still pretty bad.

Like dating your employee is sketchy as is, given Blitz can control whether Stolas gets a raise or pay cut, gets promoted or demoted, fired or not...

But this is presumably after Stolas lost his home and job and is now living in poverty.

(As evidenced by the trailer showing Stolas' home being frozen over, and him seeming genuinely scared and needing Blitz to protect him instead of using his powers)

This all seems to have happened in the same day, too. Living in poverty is bad enough as is, but this man had everything and now suddenly has nothing and is just left to process that.

He also presumably has to provide for his daughter as well as himself, assuming he didn't lose custody of her in the divorce (Oh! And that reminds me! He's going through a divorce...)

And Blitz... is his hope of surviving after such a devastating turn of events. Who he happens to be dating...

I get that Blitz isn't very financially stable either, but he'd still be Stolas' provider and in a better position than he is. He still has the high ground, even if it isn't super high.

Boss/employee relationships are all the more questionable when the employee is in such a vulnerable position emotionally and financially.

[glittergummy]

i hate to say it but-

Virulence's voice claim is Tim Curry 😶‍🌫️

[reticent-fate]

part 2/26? (might be restructuring uploads so it might be 27 parts instead. dw about it.)

from the beginning

inspired by the whole genre of otherkin hrt comics (obviously, i just forgot to mention it in the body of the first part)

[mikewanders]

[tangledinink]

WHAT DO THE GEMINI TWINS THINK OF COFFEE

Do they get to drink coffee?

These motherfuckers both LOVE coffee, are you kidding me? Hell yeah they get coffee. Only the fanciest of shits for them, of course. Donnie drinks it WAY more often, but Leo isn't going to look like a little kid and NOT have the occasional espresso, too.

Donnie drinks it like there's no tomorrow (though Mama will chide him in public for appearance's sake,) he genuinely loves it. Leo has grown to enjoy it over time, though he initially hated it and only drank it to try to fit in/look cool. They are both,,,, somewhat addicted. They keep VERY busy schedules, being celebrities and all, and don't always get the most sleep.

[gayofthefae]

Also a consideration to think about what type of performance young Will, Mike, and Jonathan demands when we know that none of the kids were an open call, the were all required to be experienced in the original auditions - and the same with Holly, and I don't think Martie (young Eleven) was open call either. Young Will also wasn't open call.

The resemblance was more important that the performance for them on this because they trust that the performance will be able to be achieved.

Whatever the performance, it is coachable.

[devilsainz]

depressing thoughts in the tags be warned

[rxttenfish]

tbh tho this is EXACTLY what merfolk relationships look like

and they just keep track of this. in their heads. all the time.

[al-mayriti]

who hates operación triunfo more edgelords who thing they're above a silly music contest or fans of operación triunfo

[dynamitekansai]

Y’all wanna know why I did it? Because I had to. I had to. I ain’t wanna do it. I ain’t wanna do it! I ain’t had no choice! I never had a choice, because HE is my BLOOD!  There’s one person I blame. There’s one person I blame, and that is you, Sami Zayn!

[genderwoods]

the barbie movie is probably gonna awake a new wave of cishet white women who think femininity is the counterculture and that calling yourself a bimbo is so revolutionary isnt it