#literally every incarnation has been queer in some way

[headcanonsandmore]

"The Doctor is outwardly queer now" The Doctor has been queer since 1963. 🤦

[sweet-baby-bird]

There's a prevailing fanon about Dean's seventeenth birthday, as outlined in John Winchester's Journal, a non-canon supplemental novel to the TV series.

The events as described in the novel go like this. John sends Dean on his first solo hunt on Dean's seventeenth birthday, which John calls a "test." The mark being the ghosts of two mission nuns who had fallen in love, been discovered, and committed suicide. The Winchesters had investigated the site, and theorized that some item belonging to the nuns is the source of the haunting. John expects Dean to handle the salt-and-burn easily. Dean returns from the hunt as expected, but John thinks he won't send him on another solo for a while. “That was a little tense,” he writes.

The popular fanon goes that John somehow caught onto the possibility that Dean is bisexual. John sent Dean on a case involving sapphic nuns as a sort of punishment, to expose Dean to queer suffering and quite literally “scare him straight.”

I think there is room for that interpretation. But I don’t really subscribe to this fanon. Nothing in the passage to me gives an indication that John is upset with Dean in any way. If this birthday story is meant to imply John disapproves of his son's queerness, then it would make sense to include a passage about John suspecting Dean is getting too close to a male friend or engaging in stereotypically gay behavior. But there is no such story, at least not in this novel. IIRC, Ritchie is the only male friend of Dean's John mentions. And that's seven years later, when Dean and Richie hunt a succubus together. Neither the novel nor the show give the impression that Dean and Richie are romantically/sexually involved (not that I'm opposed to that headcanon). John comments at times on Dean's womanizing, and he laments that dragging Dean into the hunter lifestyle has prevented Dean from settling down with a woman and being a father. There is something to the idea that John is invested in Dean performing normative heterosexuality, but I feel like John would have brought it up if Dean ever strayed from that. Also, nothing about how John writes about the nuns implies disgust or disapproval of their being queer. He is matter-of-fact. At worst, kind of cold. Bigotry can take more covert forms than, say, shouting slurs, but I don't read John as being averse to queerness here. I also don't see this as being any more cruel to the nuns than the Winchesters' other ghost hunts.

Again, I do think this popular reading of the novel is a valid one. It is interesting that Alex Irvine, the author, has Dean confront queer "monsters" during this formative moment in his adolescence. He may well have been trying to say something about Dean's relationship to queerness here. John does not elaborate on what makes the hunt "tense," so it's left up to the reader's imagination. I just think interpreting it as John's homophobic attack on his son requires making some assumptions. John Winchester abused his sons and did a shit job of raising them, but I don't interpret him as the incarnation of every possible evil. I think he's a complex and interesting character. So that's why I'm kind of bummed that Dean's seventeenth birthday and the "homophobic John" headcanon are the fandom's main takeaways from the journal. I'd really like to hear other interpretations people have of this story and of the novel as a whole.

[mystybelle]

I really feel like 358days/2 had the most interesting overall gameplay design, followed closely by chain of memories. But moment to moment decision making was definitely way better in 2, and 3 imo. But 2 executed the best on actual gameplay feel and flow.

kh3's gameplay, the actual actions felt (ik it's not profound to say) floaty. But I don't mean Sora's movement felt floaty, or he felt "light" to play with. I mean the controls themselves felt uncomfortably unresponsive, or slow to respond, in a way that hasn't been there through many of the mainline games.

In 1 Sora felt a little clunky and unwieldy, and it made sense and felt right considering the context of the game itself. He was a dorky little 14 year old, dealing with eldritch horrors of the like that would drive most mad, processing/repressing trauma as result, managing the complexities of teenage queer relationships, going through the start of puberty, learning how to fight like an anime character and a cartoon, and he did it all with a Reason stat of like... 2. And a smile on his face.

Roxas felt the same, but was much heavier, in KH2 and 358 (tbh all the nobodies are very heavy; Riku too, in literally every incarnation he can be played).

From there, Sora has grown progressively floatier in the same way a lightweight character is in any fighting game.

In KH3 though, playing Sora felt like wading through a muddled dream where you're almost lucid, but not quite. He could do more, and much faster than in previous titles. But executing any action felt off. As if you, the player, were being artificially disconnected from Sora/the controller, to an extent.

If I didn't know there was weird production hell going on during 3's development, both on the technical side, and from weird meddling with the narrative thanks to Disney being anxious corporate weirdos about branding, I would assume it was intentional given the subject matter of the game. But the whole game feels off in a similar way, not just Sora's gameplay. And keeping with that curious theme of how characters feel to play in the series, Sora's KH3 incarnation should've come out way heavier than he did.

You can almost see glimpses of it too, in the way reflect feels in KH3 compared to 2, or other games. Or the Fire element spells, and some select keyblade flourishes.

I got lost in the weeds a bit. But yeah.

if relevant, in your tags/replies you can specify the version of what game you picked (example: chain of memories vs re:chain of memories).

this poll is not about how brilliant or dumb you thought the plot of each game was, just your opinion about the gameplay/fun level.

[ worst kingdom hearts gameplay poll ]

[sebastianshaw]

@southern-belle-outcasts- “Yeeeah I saw that earlier. Siiiigh.” If it were just a dearly held headcanon of mine, I’d get it. No matter how many hints and subtext there are, they still are just that, and no one is required to share my views. But you literally SAW him say it in that panel from 2019. And, what I observed then is....no one else seemed to. As I’ve said before about it, fandom on Tumblr typically goes NUTS over the slightest hint of queerness. Hell, they reach like crazy a lot of the times, imo. But here Shaw is blatantly saying “I devour both men and women” in a clearly sexual sense and just. . .nothing. Did nobody read it? I think they did. They just didn’t make the connection they would if another character, one they LIKED, said this. Because no one likes Shaw, and on Tumblr, queerness is innately tied to likeability. Not respectability, but likeability. I’ve said before why I understand that people wouldn’t want Shaw for bi rep. . .but the Tumblr community seems to LOVE Mystique for it, and she’s EVERY nasty stereotype of bi women as malicious, manipulative, mentally unstable seductresses. But she’s also humanized, sympathetic, has the right politics. So she’s likeable. Sinister has NONE of those qualities, but he’s entertaining and fun to read in his current incarnation, so while some people have been critical of his OTT queercoding in the Krakoa era, most celebrate it. Because he’s likeable as a character, if not a person. Shaw’s not. Ergo, Shaw could probably fuck a man onscreen and people would claim he can’t be bi. The same way I’ve seen people very seriously talk about who “can” and “can’t” be queer, like saying Ellen D.egeneres is “a straight woman who just happens to fuck women” as if lesbians cant be nasty people. Or when people apologize for being/liking men or masc folks. It’s those same vibes, like sexuality and who you’re attracted to is not simply a gauge for if you’re good or not, but if you’re Cool or not. Mystique and Sinister and other beloved queer/queercoded villains may not be good, but they’re cool and liked and thus get to have their sexuality recognized. Shaw can put in just as much subtext---and hell, TEXTUAL text---and he doesn’t because he’s The Wrong Type of Person. He’s not a radical revolutionary or a fabulous quip-cracking queen, so hey, who cares, right? And it’s frustrating to me not as a fan of the character, which is small potatoes, and more because of this cultural trend it represents that Really Disturbs Me.

[desperatepleasures]

Murata for the four headcannons thing?

:3c

Headcanon A:  realistic

part of the reason he fucks with wolfram so much when they first meet in the novels is that wolfram looks exactly like shinou and it's been WAY too long since he's been able to fuck with shinou.

the other part is that wolf keeps taking it out on yuuri and it's Extremely Fun to watch that play out.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

when the priestesses are like "FINALLY we have a man around here pls fix this window etc etc" it's not because they somehow, after centuries without a man around, are incapable of doing that stuff themselves. it's bc they know he's trans and are trying to validate him

personally he doesn't need the validation and would rather be left alone, but he appreciates the sentiment ig???

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

in the novels it's canon that he can, to some extent at least, feel the presence of yuuri's soul, albeit faintly when they're in different worlds. he has a hard time untangling exactly what his feelings for yuuri are, because how can he tell if he misses yuuri because of yuuri, or because he literally feels yuuri's absence in his soul?

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

every single incarnation of the Great Sage has been queer in one way or another

... actually that's totally realistic and no one can argue with me

[abigailnussbaum]

How to do Garak/Bashir in Canon DS9

Yesterday there was a fun tweet asking people how they would remake DS9 if they were given the option today.

Which led to some fun discussions (you can see my answers here). Obviously one thing that pretty much everyone said was “canon Garak/Bashir”. That’s generally considered one of the show’s big missed opportunities, with both Andrew J. Robinson and some of the show’s producers expressing regret over never having gone there. But it did get me thinking: how would you tell this sort of story? Because look, it’s one thing to write Garak/Bashir in fanfic, filling in gaps in the canon or changing the entire tone of the story to suit your ‘ship. But if you’re retelling DS9 along basically the same lines - the end of the Cardassian occupation, the discovery of the wormhole, the Jem’hadar, the Dominion, the war with Cardassia - and with the personalities of the characters and the tone of the show largely unchanged, how do you fit Garak/Bashir into that story?

There are some obvious issues with trying to work this ship into the show’s story and overall tone. For one thing, Bashir is a Starfleet officer. We like to make fun of his early, annoying incarnation, but even in that form he is clearly a decent, principled man with strong values. It’s one thing to flirt (literally or figuratively) with a mysterious, sexy spy, but getting into a relationship with him would not only be stupid, it would run counter to Bashir’s image of himself. You could go in a dark direction with this - Garak seduces Bashir purely as a way of gaining power over him (and perhaps out of force of habit); maybe they end up in a kind of Hannibal/Will relationship. But that doesn’t seem sustainable in the long-term, or congruent with the type of show DS9 was. Bashir can’t trust Garak, and Garak has done things that Bashir would consider disgusting. That’s something you have to take into consideration if you want to write them as a long-term couple.

It’s also worth considering that, as much as the Garak/Bashir pairing lingers over the fannish perception of the show, it’s not actually that prominent in the series itself. The last episode that I would call a Garak/Bashir story, “Our Man Bashir”, is an early S4 episode, well before the Dominion War happens. And Garak is absent for a lot of the later developments in Bashir’s life - “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” (you’d think Garak, with his complicated relationship with his father, would have something to say about Julian having been illegally genetically enhanced by his parents) or “Statistical Probabilities” (a troupe of savants who claim to be able to predict the course of the war would surely be of interest to Garak). In most of these stories, Bashir is accompanied by O’Brien, a much safer option as far as suppressed sexual tension is concerned (it should go without saying that this feels like a deliberate choice on the show’s part, to undermine any idea of a Garak/Bashir relationship). Meanwhile, Bashir is absent from most of Garak’s important Dominion War stories - his relationship with Ziyal and her death, his position in Damar’s rebellion, “In the Pale Moonlight”. So if you’re going to retell DS9 with Garak/Bashir as a real ship, you'd have to rewrite a lot of these stories to take that into account.

Finally, you’ve got the show’s ending, which is an extremely dark one for Garak, who gets everything he thought he wanted - his position restored, a place of honor in Cardassian society - just at the point where Cardassia is decimated and, in his words, left dead. Working a romance with Bashir into this ending would be tricky, and risks ending up with the final scenes of Man of Steel - two people making out atop a mass grave.

(Obviously, I’m taking it as a given that this hypothetical version of DS9 is much, much better at writing mature, complicated romantic relationships than the real one. Most actual DS9 romance was painfully juvenile, and the one exception, Sisko/Kasidy, was also an extremely low-drama ship - Sisko literally sent Kasidy to jail and the next time they met they were like “so, that was a bit of a bump in the road; dinner later?” It should go without saying that Garak/Bashir would not be a low-drama ship, so the writing would need to be there to support it.)

Anyway, complicated but obviously not impossible. This is what I’ve come up with for how I would rewrite the show with Garak/Bashir as an ongoing couple. I’m sure there’s plenty of fanfic with other, better ideas.

To start with, lose the claustrophobia business. Or, you know, keep it, but the reason Garak was expelled from the Obsidian Order and banished from Cardassia is that he’s gay. (To be fair, I feel like “claustrophobia” was pretty clearly code even in the original show.) A lot of people in the upper echelons of the Cardassian hierarchy know this - Dukat certainly knows - and miss no opportunity to harass him about it.

Obviously, in this version of the show Cardassia is deeply queerphobic. I don’t think this is a huge leap. Cardassian society is deeply conformist, and family-oriented in a fascist-adjacent sort of way that prioritizes the father as the master of the home. It’s hard to imagine a society like that tolerating deviations from gender norms, and it seems fair to assume that reprecussions for such deviations would be severe.

Garak doesn’t actually have a problem with this - or at least, not that he expresses. Garak’s defining trait is that he believes in, and loves, Cardassia deeply, and espouses its chauvinistic (in both senses of the word) values to anyone who will listen. But at the same time, he’s smart enough (and enough of an outsider) to know how hollow and destructive those values really are. So Garak will explain to anyone who challenges him on it that Cardassian homophobia is right and proper, while knowing that he has fallen victim to it himself.

Bashir is out. Though “out” might not be the right word because the Federation is so nonchalant about queerness that the notion of being closeted doesn’t really exist anymore (this is a version of Star Trek where we actually follow through on the promise of a more progressive future). But at any rate, to Bashir and the other Starfleet characters, him being gay is so unremarkable that it doesn’t even come up until his and Garak’s frienship is already established. This deeply shocks Garak - he knew humans were perverted, but the good Doctor, his friend? Bashir, meanwhile, wastes no opportunity to needle Garak about his society’s barbaric homophobia (Garak: “humans may be prone to such... urges, but Cardassians are made of finer stuff”; Bashir: *rolls eyes so hard he can see the back of his head*). But at the same time, and without being entirely willing to admit it to himself, Garak is intrigued.

And so we continue for about five seasons. Garak flirts with Bashir, partly because he thinks this is a way of unsettling the good Doctor, but really because he wants him. Bashir assumes that it’s all an act, and plays along with it a little because, hey, sexy spy. But he never imagines that it could go somewhere real, and probably wouldn’t follow through if it did.

And then Bashir gets replaced with a Changeling (this is a version of DS9 where that idea was seeded throughout the first half of the fifth season instead of being decided on five minutes before “In Purgatory’s Shadow” started shooting). And the changeling takes one look at Garak, sees an obvious in, and seduces him. Which clearly causes some awkwardness when Garak finds the real Bashir in a Dominion prison camp.

Bashir finds out. Worf tells him (this is a version of Worf who isn’t weirdly sexist and judgmental about other people’s sex lives). (Bashir: “why is Garak being so weird around me?”; Worf: “he and the fake you were doing it”; Bashir: “what”; Worf: “they were boning”; Bashir: “WHAT”; Worf: “they were engaging in sexual intercourse”; Bashir: “that's not possible. Garak only flirts with me to keep me on my toes”; Worf: *shrugs* “if that’s what you want to call it”.)

So now Bashir is upset because he’s spent the last five years bugging Garak about Cardassian homophobia and it turns out that Garak was a victim of it, plus he’s now been victimized by someone wearing Bashir’s face. And Garak is upset because he let his attraction to Bashir (Garak: “my base lust!”) blind him to the fact that his friend had been replaced by a changeling, leading to him being comromised as an agent (I will leave it as an exercise to the readers which one bothers him more). And, well, if you can’t get from there to romance on your own, you may not have read enough fanfic in your life.

Then you get the war, and honestly, I don’t know. You could do an on/off thing. You could make it a very casual relationship in between the two of them trying not to die and/or lose the Alpha Quadrant to the Dominion. You could have Bashir say “fuck it, I might die tomorrow and this guy makes me happy; who cares if my boyfriend is a liar and a murderer”. You could even go the Worf/Jadzia route and have them muse romantically about having a life together after the war. But either way, they spend more time around each other than they did in the original series.

But! When Garak goes back to Cardassia to help Damar’s rebellion, there’s a lot of tension between them, because Damar heard from Dukat that Garak is a pervert (you could still keep Ziyal’s death and Garak’s anger at Damar over it; those two always made more sense as friends anyway). And then it turns out that there’s an entire Cardassian queer underground, and in typical Cardassian fashion they’ve turned it into a whole spy network with operatives at every level of government. (Garak: “why did you never approach me?”; queer Cardassian underground: “dude, have you met you?”) And they’re willing to work with Damar if he promises that in the new Cardassia, they will no longer be persecuted (I think this dovetails pretty nicely with Garak’s observation that Damar needs to be disillusioned about the flaws of Cardassian society). So all of a sudden Garak is looking at a future where what he is doesn’t make him a pariah anymore.

And then you get to the destruction of Cardassia, and, again, I’m not sure how that combines with Garak/Bashir. The entire ending of DS9 is pretty rough on romantic pairings in general, but at least when Kira/Odo and Sisko/Kasidy break up, it’s bittersweet, and in service of other new beginnings. Garak’s ending is just bleak, and I’m not sure how you deal with a romance on top of that. The best I can come up with is Bashir saying “yes, this is horrible, but you can rebuild, and if you need my help with that, I’m not far”, leaving a door open for them to reconnect in the future.

Thoughts?

[eveninglottie]

write what you want regardless of the genders. it's better to spit the story out and then go back and revise then get hung up on whether or not every interaction or plot point could be part of an 800 word call-out tweet-longer that briefly trends on fanfic twitter. everyone comes at fiction from their own distinct background. you could write the most 'pure' romance ever, regardless of the genders, and it could still inadvertently trigger someone or raise concerns. comfort can be misleading.

so I don’t want you to think I’m disagreeing with you here, because you’re right. people spend way too much time thinking out the possible doomsday scenarios of what they might do instead of just doing it to see what happens. I am one of those people, for sure, it’s stopped me from doing pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted to do my whole life, so we’re on the same page here with both the concept of not worrying about what other people will think and also how no one holds the magic gatekeeping key which dictates what is problematic or not. every person is different and some things will upset people in a way that doesn’t upset you. that’s just a given. 

but I think that’s not really helpful when you’re trying to figure out your own motivations for doing something. 

like, yes, is a lot of this affected by how I think other people will react to things I create? of course. everything i do will be affected by how I think other people will react. that’s just how my brain works, and it’s my job to keep growing more confident in myself to counteract that (because the older you get you really do give less of a fuck and boy it’s so nice!!) what I was trying to bring up in that post was my own reasons for feeling more comfortable writing one thing than another. 

because I just think it’s fascinating and complicated and I’ve mentioned more than once to friends that it really just surprised me how freeing writing m/m has been vs m/f. it’s like my descent into sk was this moment of enlightenment when I realized “hey this is a hell of a lot easier to talk about when there are two boys involved!” like I realize that the majority of my writing the past two years has been on my own, and even though I can tell you’ve I’ve written well over 500k words and only posted maybe a fifth of that I can’t prove what I’m about to say so you’re just going to have to take my word for it, BUT I’ve included so much more discussion about sexuality and how characters express it and grow with it and figure out for themselves what they are. like it was never a thing I thought about a lot when I was writing my m/f fics (even tho all the women were still bi but that’s a whole other barrel of monkeys). it was never me sitting down and interrogating my choice for writing that pairing the way I did. I just did it. (I didn’t stop to consider the gender is what I mean, I thought about literally all the other things but gender and sexuality were not included in that) but now there’s a whole other sphere of characterization that I keep finding myself drawn to, and even without realizing it, it becomes a big part of how I write certain characters. (like deciding to write keith as demi while still being sexually and physically attracted to shiro has been really eye opening for me as someone on the asexual spectrum.)

because like, for example, I wrote a fem!bilbo fic, right? so clearly I was thinking about gender a bit, but most of that had to do with me having always reimagined that story (and lotr) with female protagonists. that’s what I did with a lot of childhood faves, actually, eragon, harry potter being two of the most prominent, and thinking about fem!bilbo and how that would change the story especially if she was in a relationship with thorin and the shire was maybe a bit more stifling for a woman, etc. - BUT that was one of those pairings that I’d never been drawn to when it was m/m. I couldn’t really get into it, and I was not a fan of the hobbit movies at all, honestly, and I tried, and it was only when I switched things around did that fic click for me, but I wonder a lot if I were to have come to hobbit fic later, after I’d gotten over my aversion to m/m (not in general, just me writing it, because reasons), would I have written it with bilbo as a boy? would I have been less likely to imagine bilbo as a woman? or was it a number of factors that led me to write that fic which really couldn’t have existed in any other incarnation, and would it have been a different fic entirely?

(the hp thing in particular is SO WEIRD to think about now because a lot of what I’ve been grappling with in my drarry fic is very male-centric? not like in a bad way, just thinking about the rivalry and bonds between boys and how boys look up to their male mentors and authority figures in very different ways than they do their female counterparts and also what does being interested in other boys do to one’s internalized and very misogynistic/homophobic ideas of Legacy and Family and Proper Gender Expression specifically when it comes to sex with other men like it’s Very Gendered in my head and it’s hard to separate that from what I used to be interested in which has expressed itself in other ways, specifically roslyn as chosen one in ascendant which I’ve said before was the result of a decade of rewriting those boy heroes as girls because I felt so connected to them and wanted girls to be every bit as important as boys, like I could draw a straight line from me writing bits and bobs of girl!harry as a fourteen year old and me writing roslyn in ascendant and wow I kind of want to punch myself in the face for how long I’ve rambled on about my own stuff but you know what no this is my tumblr and I get to obsessively and exhaustively talk about my own fictional worlds if I want to)

so it’s been a bit of a mindfuck trying to reconcile this shift in my own interests with the fact that I am a woman who identifies as largely asexual. and I think it’s important to sit down with yourself every once in a while and really look at the things you produce and do some self-examination. because I do wonder a lot if my comfort writing m/m now is because of this lack of pressure I normally feel when writing female characters or if it’s because I don’t have to interact with Me As Author so much when I write about boys because I am not a boy or if it’s because I feel a lot more comfortable identifying as queer when for the majority of my life I’d forced myself to be straight even though it didn’t feel right. 

then there’s the whole conversation about women writing m/m and how a lot of queer men feel they’re being fetishized or that their stories are being appropriated by women, in the same way that white people writing stories about people of color can be appropriative, men writing about women, straights writing about lgbtq+, cis people writing about trans or genderqueer people, et cetera with literally any minority being written by someone not from that minority, right? 

and I think it’s a bit reductive to say that it doesn’t matter. because it does matter. you’re right in saying that it matters to someone and I think the job of anyone who creates any kind of content is to think about that and be mindful that you don’t create in a vacuum. your art has power even if you don’t think it does, if you don’t want it to, and that’s something no one should take for granted.

now, I am not saying that certain people do not have the right to write certain stories. no one has the right to write anything, just as no one is forbidden from writing anything. and no one writing anything should be harassed for writing something that people perceive is out of their wheelhouse (because a lot of marginalizations are not visible! abuse, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, whether you’re neurotypical or not! and there’s no requirement that you make public your trauma/identity to provide cred! in fact it’s kind of horrific that anyone thinks this!) it’s a complicated dynamic but the more we talk about these things the easier it is when a marginalized person says, “hey this thing you wrote is kind of bad,” the writer can go “oh man I’m sorry, let me think about it and see what I did wrong so I can do better in the future” OR “oh wow I see what you mean, but this is important to me” and the reader can go “I respect your right to write what you want and in the future I’ll do more to shield myself from this kind of content” instead of Cancelling someone because they didn’t effectively prostrate themselves before the ultimate judges of problematic content, a bunch of randos on the internet.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, yes, I agree with you that it’s not necessary to worry about this stuff, and that a lot of it is energy wasted especially when you’re worrying about theoretical responses from people who read your stuff, but that’s not helpful to me, because I think that’s disregarding the fact that we live in a society with weird power dynamics that are constantly shifting. I think it’s my job as someone who is mentally capable of dealing with this kind of self-examination to push back on some of these things when I can. because if I didn’t challenge myself every once in a while, I wouldn’t grow as a person or a writer and if there was one mantra I would live my life by besides the assertion that I would be blissfully happy if I downloaded my consciousness into a robot body, it would be that You Have To Be Okay With Critique and It’s Good When People Call You Out In A Safe Setting, like everyone is a dick and an asshole and a Bad Person and pretending you’re not is the most useless battle you could ever fight. we contain multitudes and some of those tudes are downright ugly.

quick sidebar: I would not have been able to have this kind of conversation with myself four years ago, and something I have not even talked about is how my shift toward more m/m content began at the same time as I was getting used to getting medical treatment for my grab bag of mental illnesses, like it’s pretty obvious that I got into sk right about the time I settled into my meds so what does That even mean?? so many THINGS to consider!!

idk. I know when I write stuff like this people think I’m beating myself up over it, but I’m really not. I just like talking about it sometimes and this tumblr is where all my neuroses go to live forever more in the annals of this blue hell until I chicken out and delete them the next day. I guess I know that when I read other people talking about things I’ve also been thinking about, it’s nice to hear. and as this is something that is still new to me, fandom in general is still bonkers to a part of my brain because I came into it as an adult, the whole conversation (if there even is a conversation because there might not be but there’s one going on in my brain) about women writing m/m is interesting complicated and something I think about a lot. clearly without any real focus or conclusions to be drawn, because I dropped out of college and never learned how to make my point in a concise and understandable manner. 

anyway I hope you don’t read this as me arguing with you nonny, I just wanted to clarify what I mean in the original post

[benisasoftboi]

So on Friday night I made this post:

Which I expected that maybe ten, twenty people would see? I didn’t think anyone would really care about a joke about something so old and obscure, and it would just get lost in all the Detective Pikachu stuff. Instead, within five hours, it had become my most popular post. 

I know it’s still not a huge number, but it’s still way more attention than I’ve ever received for anything... ever, so I’ve been thinking about Pokemon Live a lot since. Which has been bad, because this morning I had to take a very important political economy exam, and instead of thinking about Bretton Woods or Marx, I was thinking about Pokemon. I nearly referred to my country’s former Prime Minister as ‘David Camerupt’. It wasn’t good. 

I need to expunge my thoughts. Specifically, my thoughts on one topic in particular - the way this show treats, or rather mistreats, the character of James. Because I truly, truly love Pokemon Live. I do. It’s one of the most glorious dumpster fires I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a poor quality recording of. But this is the one thing I definitely don’t love.

I don’t expect anyone to read this. I mean, I said that last time, but this time I really don’t. It’s a long essay on a niche topic, and it isn’t even funny. But on the off chance it’ll get you to stick with me, I promise that there will be pictures of Andrew Rannells cuddling puppies at the end. 

So,

How Pokemon Live Mistreats James, and Why It Matters:

The Mandatory Mentioning of The Actor

I’m guessing anyone who knows anything about Pokemon Live also knows that now highly successful, Tony-nominated Broadway and television actor Andrew Rannells was in it playing James. And if you didn’t, now you know why I’ve mentioned him twice now. I’m a big fan of this guy.

He hated this role. Absolutely despised it. Apparently the show was a miserable environment to work in for everyone. The costumes were uncomfortable. The audiences were unbearable. There’s a making of for this show, which can be viewed on YouTube in its entirety - I’ve watched the whole thing more than once and you can see in every cast member’s eyes - there’s no light there. They’re all dead inside. It’s almost heartbreaking.  

To be clear - he’s the only one of these people I, or anyone else I’ve seen, ever makes fun of for this show. And that’s because he’s fine. He’s fine! He’s done very well for himself and talking about it won’t hurt his career, and there’s just always something really hilarious about seeing very successful people in terrible things, isn’t there? Chris Hemsworth in Saddle Club, Zach Braff in Babysitter’s Club, literally everyone in Foodfight. It’s not malicious or in any way intended to be punching down - just poking fun at a really good actor’s really bad early work. It’s not even really making fun of him, more that he was in this.

But there is one reason he hated the role that I don’t find so funny, and that’s that he felt the people that wrote the thing had made James a grossly over-the-top, borderline-to-over-the-line (depending on your tolerance) homophobic stereotype. And... yeah. They undeniably did that.  

Rannells understandably dislikes the character, and to be honest - that makes me a little sad. Knowing that musical!James is probably the only version of the character he (and likely a lot of parents who saw the show, and other cast members) ever really encountered, that’s a huge shame. Because if we go back to the anime the musical’s based on, the one I, and many others, grew up on, James is quite different. In fact, I personally consider anime!James to be the best character in the entire Pokemon franchise.

Why We Love Team Rocket 

Just want to quickly note that I can only discuss the anime up to about halfway through the Sinnoh seasons - I’ve seen basically nothing after that. My childhood was some original series, a lot of Hoenn, and a fair bit of early Sinnoh (somehow skipped over Johto almost entirely, don’t really know how that happened). If any of this is now not accurate, well - it’s not really relevant for this discussion anyway, but I still apologise. 

The Team Rocket trio, James especially, is, pretty queer-coded. This is not unusual for villainous characters in children’s media before the 2010s, so much so that I would guess that a lot of the time it wasn’t even being done deliberately - it was just that common a trope that it was all but expected your show would have at least one flamboyantly effeminate, villainous bloke. And James - especially early James - has no qualms about showing his feminine side:

Notice that Jessie adopts masculine attire to match - she doesn’t always do this, but I like that they have her at least do it sometimes. 

Team Rocket’s disguises became less and less likely to involve cross dressing as the show went on, but it’s one of the things best remembered about them. James also has a strong association with roses, and possesses several other feminine mannerisms. Arguably he’s far more downplayed than most other villains of the type (even more so than others present in Pokemon - Harley’s a great example, who was also, coincidentally, played by Andrew Rannells), but it’s present. And while yes, obviously in real life none of those things should be taken as definitive indication of a person’s orientation, and straight men are perfectly capable of twirling around in pretty dresses - in fact, I fully endorse it - this is fiction. Specifically fiction from the early 2000s. And in fiction, certain things are intended as visual cues and shorthand.

So I really, really doubt we were supposed to think James is entirely straight (I personally have always thought that he’s actually bi, but I’m not opposed to alternatives). You could make the case, but like. Come on.

But how is this different from musical!James? And how is this different than any other villain like him? Very simple. Anime!James has depth.

Not a tremendous amount. It’s a children’s cartoon made to cash in on a popular video game. But he, and Jessie and Meowth, are among the most well-rounded characters in the show’s cast, in a way that’s actually very relatable. It helps that they aren’t actually very villainous people most of the time. I know so many people who grew up with the show that loved, rooted for, and identified with them over the actual protagonists, by a mile. Myself included - I can remember two separate James-centered episodes that made me cry as a kid.

And these three are particularly beloved by young LGBT adults. We know from their backstories that they all came from rough circumstances - Jessie desperately poor and struggling to get anywhere or be recognised, Meowth having changed a fundamental part of himself in attempt to gain love and instead being ostracised for it, and James running away from an abusive household. They’re three people (/Pokemon) who felt alone in the world, that have now found each other. And whether you view Jessie and James’s relationship as romantic, friendship, or found family, it’s far more compelling than any other relationship in the show, at least to me. They may be criminals, but it’s not hard to see why some kids - especially the kids who might already feel like they’re just a bit different - would latch on to them. 

Even if you didn’t know James’s backstory, he still has a character. He’s frequently shown to be the most moral of the trio, he has a stronger bond with Pokemon than honestly even Ash - even more of a running gag than his flamboyance is the fact that his pets love him so much that they just wanna hug him all the time, with inevitable slapstick consequences - he has dorky hobbies like bottle cap collecting, and he’s even occasionally shown to be a bit of an environmentalist. Yes he is in many ways a stereotypical camp villain - but he’s also more. And that’s why we love him. 

And I’d bet anything there probably were some little boys who watched the show and saw James and thought ‘that guy’s like me!’. And yeah, that guy is a villain, because god forbid a maybe-gay character also be a good guy. But more than any other character like him that I’ve seen, he’s also always been a person. And considering how most of the other options kids like that had at the time were either one-note villains or nothing (and even now it’s sparse pickings) - that’s valuable.

And then there’s Pokemon Live.

*long, long sigh*

Oh, Pokemon Live. You beautiful disaster. 

What did you do to my boy?

Is there nothing that better encapsulates it than the bit where James asks Giovanni where Mecha MewTwo (...I know) “stands on campaign finance reform, social security and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”?

First off, I like that James is politically engaged! Good for him! Completely out of character, but still!

And I do find this line incredibly funny, but I want to be very clear about why I find it funny. The line is funny because referencing a real world American discriminatory military policy in a Pokemon musical is just... so completely absurd. It’s super jarring and when I first watched it, I had to pause it so I could stop laughing about the possible implications of Pokemon Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Is there a Pokemon American military then? Pokemon Democrats and Pokemon Republicans? Pokemon Bill Clinton? POKEMONICA LEWINSKY???

It just raises so many questions.

Also Rannells’s delivery is incredible.

But the thing is, that’s not the joke here, is it? The actual ‘joke’ is ‘HA HA HE’S GAY! HE SAID THAT BECAUSE HE’S GAY!’. Which gets even worse when you think about it and realise that this situation is really just a gay man (I don’t think there’s any doubt about it in this particular incarnation, is there) asking his boss whether or not he thinks people like him should be discriminated against. How is that a joke? (The answer is that it isn’t.)

Which makes it that much more inappropriate for a children’s Pokemon musical, which is sort of, in a dark way, almost funnier. It’s that juxtaposition of something kiddy and cute with something that definitely isn’t. 

But hilarious as I find it, given the chance to I would go back and get rid of that line. I dislike what it implies - that being a gay man is nothing more than a punchline - more than I like the absurdist humour. 

And that’s the whole problem with how they chose to write James for this whole thing. They took a really good example of how you can have this type of villain while also making him a good character, and they turned him into nothing more than a stereotype.

You could say ‘but it’s a much shorter story than a TV show! They wouldn’t have time to make him nuanced!’, to which I would say 1. He doesn’t have to be nuanced, he just has to be slightly more than I’M GAY and 2. There have been 21 Pokemon movies at time of writing, two of which came out before Pokemon Live did. None of them, at least of the ones I’ve seen, committed any character assassinations like this. The first one even had another baffling reference to real world America:

That’s so out of nowhere and silly that I laugh every time I think about it (the Minnesota Vikings are an American football team, if you didn’t know). See, Pokemon Live! It’s possible to do jokes like that which aren’t at the expense of a minority group! Wow!

The anime even has examples of how you can do the gay jokes and make them funny. They are very rare in the show (beyond the humour of James’s personality), but remember the whole Flaming Moltres joke? It’s actually great. It’s a couple of good puns, it’s possibly Rachael Lillis’s best delivery in the whole show, and, just for confirmation, I’ve shown the clip to a few actual gay men in my life, who all said that they think that it’s very funny, and totally non-offensive. The joke is still ‘lol he gay’, but it’s also a neat play on words, it feels very in character for both of them, and it doesn’t have the same malicious, taunt-y feel of the Pokemon Live ‘joke’.

Look, the Pokemon anime is far from perfect. There are lots of moments where you have to grit your teeth and remember when it came out. But it still gave us a really, really wonderful character, and he absolutely deserved better than this.

Do I Still Love Pokemon Live?

Yes.

Even with all of this, it’s still an absolute masterpiece of unintentional hilarity. In some ways, this makes it funnier. Of course, of course, it couldn’t just have terrible costumes and a nonsense plot and really, really bad rapping - of course it’s also kind of offensive. Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be.

And I would love to talk about all the things I genuinely love about it, and maybe I will one day.

But the thing is, it’s also representative of everything that was wrong with gay-coded characters at the time, something that the show it’s based on came way closer to handling well than most other stuff of its time, no less. And that, as a whole, isn’t funny at all.

So I want to be clear. I love laughing at this show because it’s a weirdly earnest cash-in musical for something that definitely shouldn’t be a musical, with endless bizarre, quotable moments - not because the way it warped this character is actually funny. I love laughing at the character’s lines because they’re absurd choices for a Pokemon musical - not because they’re in any way funny on their own. And I love laughing at the fact that Andrew Rannells was in it because he is so much better than this - not because this is what I think he should be reduced to.

And speaking of, here’s those pictures I promised:

I love one man.

[thesinglesjukebox]

CHARLI XCX & CHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS - GONE

[7.79]

We do NOT fucking hate these people...

Elisabeth Sanders: I have no idea if this song is good or bad, all I know is that I am a homosexual. [10]

Alfred Soto: She triumphed at Pitchfork Festival against every one of my expectations: a diva who pirouetted, thrusted, and sashayed like a star with no interest in behind-the-scenes song doctoring. She played "Gone" in vivider incarnation; she sung "I fucking hate these people" as a shared joke between her and the festival's largest queer audience. The boom boom clap of the percussion keeps out of the way, but I wish it presented an obstacle over which she could hurdle. [7]

Nellie Gayle: Social anxiety does not exactly read as a the prefect pretense for a banger pop song, but then again, Charli XCX has a certain gift for emotional subterfuge. 'Gone' is a collaboration between Charli and a more subdued pop star friend, Christine & the Queens. The two wrestle between seething anger at fake social niceties and and a deeper issue - the desire to be loved and seen, even if by a group of people you couldn't care less about. It's comforting to know that even a seasoned partygirl like Charli XCX can feel the same debilitating and restrictive sense of social "unbelonging" - a scene she depicts fairly literally in the accompanying music video which features her in bondage. The jump between this wallflower characteristic and the club-ready beat feels like a perfect metaphor for Charli's career and persona itself. As pop music evolves and begins to cater to an even more confessional and vulnerable audience of millennials, it makes sense its most forward thinking vanguards would keep the pace by divulging their deepest longing while also maintaining a danceable beat. [7]

Nortey Dowuona: Sharp, rubbery bass backflips, pirouettes and twists as soapy, seething synths and steel tipped drums shimmy across the shoulders as Christine and Charli spin through as they become intertwined as one. [8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: What's that? Charli XCX writing a song about loneliness and social anxiety -- but somehow making it work as a duet? More like Charli doing this again, except this time instead of ruminating about the cosmos, commiserating about lost love, or contemplating redemption, she and Chris are plotting their escape. They spend the entire track pouring gasoline on their worries and stresses, until 3:04, when they finally erupt into flames. And then they're literally gone, leaving behind only the glitched screaming ghosts of their pop consciousness, any chance at salvation vanishing with them. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Charli XCX's trajectory since the release of Pop 2 has been confusing. Over the past year and a half, she's released 15-or-so singles/features, running the gamut from remixes of experimental rappers to big shiny club collabs with Diplo, Lizzo, and Troye Sivan. It's largely been good material (save for that Diplo Spice Girls remix), but the songs have kind of felt like diversions from the goals set out by Pop 2's post-PC MUSIC synthesis of pop artifice into sincere emotion. This is entirely her right-- if Charli just remade Pop 2 until she retired, it wouldn't have the same deconstructive power it had when it first came out. Yet even the best of her singles from last year (songs like "5 in the Morning" and her remix of Tommy Genesis' "100 Bad") felt somewhat unambitious-- playgrounds in the wreckage of pop, rather than attempts to build a new level upon it. "Gone," then, is that new level. It's the best of all possible worlds: the shiny synths and hard-hitting rhythms of "Nuclear Seasons"-era Charli, the glitchy breakdowns of her PC Music collabs, and the open, collaborative feeling of her wilderness year. "Gone" encapsulates Charli's appeal in a compact 4 minute salvo, taking a conventional core lyrical concept-- dancing the social anxiety away-- and twisting it to her will. Chris makes for perhaps the best partner Charli's had on her pop mission: her voice is clearer and more sincere, the perfect tool to clear out any suggestion of irony. But Charli herself is the key to why "Gone" works. She's the glue that holds together the disjointed impulses of the track, like she always is, but here she's also constantly moving it forward. Her vocals here are perhaps the best they've ever sounded, aloof and emotive all at once, and the fragmented lyrical picture that she and Chris paint is vivid. It took her a while, but "Gone" reveals a revitalized Charli XCX, capable of pop mastery once again. [10]

Oliver Maier: "Gone"'s release feels timed to ensure that Pop 2 fans don't abandon hope for Charli's album after the disappointing "Blame It On Your Love", with metallic globs of bass and sparkling synth arpeggios hearkening back to the palette of the 2017 mixtape. However, it's actually Christine and the Queens who gives the stronger performance here; Charli excels in emotional extremes and bratty earworms, but the purgatorial feeling of anxiety that "Gone" reckons with -- as well as the song's cavernous arrangement and less immediate hook -- are better suited to Chris' subtler wheelhouse. The breakdown in the last minute is a little superfluous, more a signifier of a willingness to experiment than a successful experiment in and of itself, but "Gone" still provides a brighter forecast for Charli than we had a few weeks ago. [6]

Joshua Copperman: So I did the dumb remix thing again. The Katy Perry one was a reorder of different parts, but this one adds more instrumentation and a four-on-the-floor kick that takes Charli back to 2009 instead of 1999. Despite my favorite performance I've heard Christine give ("do they wish to run through mee," the plainspoken way she says "baby" just before the breakdown), and the clear vocal chemistry between her and Charli, this song has so much empty space when a melody like that requires bombast. That breakdown feels like someone trying to recreate NSYNC's "Pop" using "Call Your Girlfriend" samples on a broken MPC. Couple that with the ugly flanging on Charli and Christine's voices, and any momentum and goodwill feels squandered. "Gone" is so strong until that point that it's still extremely listenable, but extremely listenable feels disappointing when it's this close to being great. [7]

Kayla Beardslee: I can't think of a more appropriate artist to enter the "crying on the dance floor" pantheon than Charli XCX: pop's resident party girl saying that she "fucking hates" the people at this party is not an artistic confession to be taken lightly. Although the marketing for this track has been informed by the tired "most personal album yet" cliche, Charli has thankfully pulled off the introspective turn by maintaining her PC Music inspirations, metallic synths bouncing off the edges of the song and giving the message of grappling with anxiety some much-needed bite. The presence of a feature is another XCX signature, and Christine and the Queens is a welcome addition: for once, a Charli track clearly shows the collaborator's influence, in this case with its clipped melodies and off-kilter yet evocative lyrics. [8]

Will Rivitz: "Backseat," off 2017's Pop 2, cascaded into perfection on the strength of its final minute ripping the preceding three into shreds. "Gone," in doing exactly that again, but even more transcendentally sublimely this time (and with a transcendentally sublime beginning three-quarters to match, something its predecessor missed by a hair), is by extension better by about one degree. And I gave "Backseat" a [9], so... [10]

Joshua Lu: In light of the multitudinous takes on social anxiety pop stars have churned out in recent years, "Gone" feels surprisingly honest. Anxiety is seen as illogical (Charli's cry of "they don't care" seemingly comes out of nowhere, which is where these feelings often come from), shameful (the song opens with an apology), and maddening (the entirety of the prechorus and Christine's verse is filled with an untempered rage), and the song's unapologetic portrayal of these aspects acts as an effective catharsis. It hits harder when casted over the stutter-step instrumental, filled with uncomfortable white space and coarse industrial noises that put the listener on edge. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A song about being impossibly and destructively tired, so much so that one can't help but be vulnerable as a last ditch effort to maintain sanity. The production captures it perfectly: steely and anthemic and spacious, it encourages one to sing along in a sort of therapeutic karaoke session. The outro is a cute release--a moment to decompress by way of A.G. Cook's love for Scritti Politti. [7]

Michael Hong: Like the best Charli XCX tracks, "Gone" deals with solitude in crowded spaces, no matter the number of collaborators involved in the track. The industrial soundscape threatens to cave in at any moment -- something that fueled by the pair's anxieties does inevitably occur, and yet remains this moment of euphoric bliss. While Charli and Chris pose several questions across the track, none are really answered. Instead, the two end with a shared statement, "don't search me in here, I'm already gone, baby," and by tossing aside the anxiety of the party, the two find peace outside of the crowd. In a crowded field of tracks about wanting to leave the party, "Gone" is one of the most captivating because of Charli's introspection and ability to bring her dystopian future into the present. [7]

Kylo Nocom: This song is a fever dream of DJ Mustard stabs warped into freestyle-esque basslines, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis communicated through modernized rhythms. "Gone" shines in stark contrast to the notable collaboration Charli's done with a certain other '80s fanatic back in late 2017, substituting emotional atmospherics for feverish danceability. Charli's unstoppable pop glee is bared down to the essentials, stripped of the dumbness that felt defining of her singles the past two years; Christine's dense songwriting and anxious percussive affinities are polished up and displayed proudly here, with no signs of the occasionally campy production cheapness that defined her 2018 album's weaker missteps. "Gone" pays empathetic attention to the overstimulation some feel at huge parties, and the bouncing, metallic chorus shivers with a knowing sensory discomfort that eventually culminates in a gloriously alien glitch breakdown. [8]

Alex Clifton: A contender for Song of the Summer that isn't "Old Town Road" (which I love dearly but does not work on its own as a party playlist). Charli and Chris are always Interesting Artists, never boring and always looking forward, and this is a perfect marriage of their strengths and sounds. It has the electro production Charli favours but never gets too overwhelming; it has a good dose of Chris's quirk and gravitas but retains a lighter touch. Moreover it's just a fun song--I can only imagine what it was like to record this in the studio, and that enthusiasm spills over to the listener. Like Jane Austen's prose, "Gone" is complex and layered but performed with ease. It's one of the hardest tricks in the book, but Charli and Chris have absolutely nailed it. [8]

Iris Xie: "Gone" listens like the measured dissertation of an almost ideal pop song in a post-PC Music world that is more open about mental health, attachment trauma, and how it damages relationships. Out of the two, Letissier is the one who delivers the vocals with the exact emotion required to hit catharsis, due to her visceral and forceful cadence that is in tune with the chorus's frankness: "I feel so unstable, fucking hate these people / How they're making me feel lately." The post-chorus is beautiful though, with one of my favorite pop-R&B vocal tropes where they both catch on the fourth word of each line, "Why do we love--" before Charli and Letissier exhale with a sharp glide before jumping back into step with the stuttering beat, with "--if we're so mistaken?" Another treat is served with the sudden drop-off into "Why do we keep when the water runs? / Ne me cherche pas, je ne suis plus là, baby," a dreamy and sad breakdown that then breaks down into more jagged edges and clipped and chewed up repetitions. This song could only be written by people who love pop music so, so deeply that they have command of masterful hooks and turns of phrase and expectations. Unfortunately, I also don't like it as much as I should, because for all of what it does right, it still lacks dynamism and range to make it stick in a way that really makes me overjoyed for it, because I feel both of their solo work was a lot sharper and more evocative, and I find the sound more muddled here, even amongst all of their loving approaches. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: One of my favorite songs is The Tycho Brahe's "Steel Wheels," a song about defeat and cutting ties to pursue other defeat. "Gone" is a lot like that song, attached to a lesser song: yet another false, poppily marketed take on social anxiety. When I'm socially phobic, which is almost all the time, it's never "those people" I hate -- I don't hate anyone without a good reason, and doing so would just add guilt and make me feel worse -- but myself. It seems too simple to posit that one song is Chris's contribution and the other's Charli's, but more to the point, I actually can't tell which is whose. Neither artist seems fully themselves, vocally or stylistically. Chris's strengths are staccato lyrics and precise bits of introspection: needles to the exact point that hurts. Charli's strength is sweepingly cathartic songs, emotions hemorrhaging out of the music and the skin. "Gone" is the midpoint of those strengths, playing to neither. [6]

William John: A favourite moment of mine in the Christine and the Queens catalogue is early single "Nuit 17 à 52", which, in its English adaptation, features a speaker in a "lace-like" state of being, waiting "for the rain to come through". It's an image of defencelessness that's so brusque it requires gentle piano chords to soften the mood. Water provides no solace to the song's protagonist; the fifty-second, pivotal night of melodrama fails to leave her mind. This is an image Christine and the Queens returns to for her contribution to Charli XCX's new single - interviews have made it clear that she penned the chorus, but it's obvious to anyone familiar with the charming peculiarities of her brand of franglais. This time the punishment of water is accompanied by inquisition - the metaphor is not used as a mere acknowledgement of self-flagellating tendencies, but and a need to know why they might arise is attached. The contention is that in the quest to know more about oneself, water can be framed not as a suffocating force, but as one of cleansing and catharsis; that in daring to be vulnerable, we open ourselves up to freedom and greatness. Enlisting a partner-in-crime to assist with such a quest doesn't hurt, and there's been few moments in pop this year as thrilling as the way these two jointly bellow "loathe" before the song gives way to its chirpy coda, as together they will themselves toward liberation. [9]

Jackie Powell: The production on "Gone" matches the exact emotional plot of the song itself. The bass synths and percussive claps are accurately abrasive and in your face. The vocal performances that both XCX and Christine give are impassioned. While the chorus might be a bit muffled and not as enunciated as I would have liked, they achieve a goal that all artists should strive for⁠--the ability to transfer their emotions through their lyrics and sounds into the soul of the listener. The mixing from their chest into their head voices that both singers do on this track brings out some sort of euphoria in me. Charli's previous singles "1999" and "Blame it on Your Love" have been catchy, but maybe not as substantive as Charli stans have wanted. I understand her strategy. It reminds me of Carly Rae Jepsen's approach to how she released "Dedicated." Both artists released advance singles that were a bit lighter in content and sound. And then of course, we heard "No Drug Like Me". The third single put out to the world was the sucker punch, the sly off-speed pitch that hits right in zone after two high fastballs that don't quite elicit a flinch. The 52-second outro in "Gone" was confusing when I first heard it, and maybe it should be a tad shorter, but I finally understand the reason it exists to begin with. If you listen closely, Charli and Christine's voices sound as though they are gargling water or are putting their faces into the water that they are claiming is still running. They make their point though, we've got to question why the water is running and it's up to us to stop it. It's uncomfortable, but we have the power to stop it. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[crowsent]

Aspect Of Winter

Let me preface this by saying that I will be biased. Any and all words coming from my mouth, typed onto this screen with my ratchet fingers, will be heavily inclined to sing good praises of this book. For two main reasons. One: it’s a gift from a darling friend of mine. Two: it’s fucking gay and my queer ass rejoices.

But that aside, READ THIS BOOK. READ IT. MAKE YOUR LIFE RICHER AND READ THE BOOK.

It is so damn good. But! Before I bust out the magnifying glass of unnecessarily big words I definitely googled to sound as extra as I physically possibly can, here’s a brief synopsis of the book.

It follows the main character, Feayr, a high-school senior who, for the sake of literally everyone, goes by Fay. For some reason, he has magical powers that enable him to essentially wield winter like his own personal mallet where everything in the world can be a nail. He’s also hella fucking gay.

Because of his powers, Fay doesn’t really feel like he fits in with normal people. Cue Janus University. It’s a magical school for people with magical potential and is essentially Fay’s ticket to having a life and a place for himself surrounded by other people like him. So he leaps on that train of opportunity with all the grace of a dying elephant and kicks off the story.

There’s magic that’s done in a very unique way, unlike Harry Potter, or Carry On, or some of the other books with magic that I’ve read. Very fresh and new. Lots of mythological creatures as well from all over the world, not just ones with Hellenic or Gaelic origins. There’s a fuckton of shit to read and enjoy and consume like the word devourer I am.

Read the book. Please read it. It is so good. I wanted to cry a few times. Read it.

Now. Onto the magnifying glass! Beware spoilers!

First thing about the book is the syntax. Easy to read, easy to understand, no less compelling. It also helps that Tom Early, the author, has such a great sense of humour. I had to put the book down to keep myself from laughing because holy shit. There are some great moments in this book. So much so that writing down all my favourite quotes would take more than one post.

It helps that Fay is hilarious in his own right. My queer ass just understands him so much. I relate to this man on so many levels and if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in the room and then myself. He’s so awkward and adorable!!!!! But. Honestly. I kind of feel bad for him.

One. His school has dick bitch homophobes who constantly tell him that he’s not worthy of anything. And, honestly, that hit hard. I’m fortunate enough that I wasn’t harassed like that in my earlier days. I’m a little more hardened now, and more than willing to throw hands, but if I heard that when I was younger, I would break.

It’s so sad seeing Fay struggle with his sexuality and try to carve a place for himself in a world that obviously fights back against him. Personally, I think that him wanting to go to Janus is a parallel to him wanting to be accepted as he is. A way to find someplace to belong, with people like him, so he would feel more normal and less weird. But that might be a stretch.

And while Fay has this awkward, shy side to him, he also has something much darker. Infinitely darker. Like. A piece of his soul dark. Kind of suspected it in the scene with the dullahan where the thing tries to take his soul but gets turned into an ice statue and shattered into a million bits instead.

That interaction paved the road for all the future dark things that Fay has the potential to do. And the things he DOES do, later on near the end of the book. It ties in nicely, subtle enough that the scene with Aria fucking floored me, mouth reaching for the floor, eyes wide like dinner plates. But it wasn’t out of the blue. There were enough hints that got my head gears whirring like the cogs of a dying clock. There were pieces for me to put together and holy shit did I fit them together. There’s so much that I sat there for a good few moments muttering “what the fuck” while I pictured Fay ripping off Aria’s wings.

It is such an intense moment in the book.

But the thing I love most about Fay is that he acknowledges his shortcomings. He KNOWS that he lets other people fight his battles for him. He knows that he doesn’t do a very good job of communicating his feelings to other people (like with Tyler and that whole spiel about him dragging Tyler into the magic world) and here’s the best part.

HE TRIES TO FIX IT. He sees what he lacks, and does his fucking best to fix it.

First encounter with the homophobes and Fay freezes, lets them have their words and their jabs, and walks off meekly with his head down. Some reflection later, and he FREEZES one of the homophobe’s lips together and walks away with his head high. Fucking proud and happy.

And after Tyler pointed out that Fay wasn’t communicating that good, Fay does what any good boyfriend (and person) should do and ACTUALLY COMMUNICATES. I fucking can’t. I am incapable of canning. This boy is so precious.

Of course, an equally precious child is Sam. I lowkey aspire to be her. One, the no-nonsense attitude that she isn’t afraid to show everyone. Two, the fact that literally everyone in school knows she can kick their collective asses and she knows it. Three, she has such a fun personality with her own little quirks that I just die on the inside.

If I met Sam when I was in highschool, I would be fucking gay for her. And in the books, Fay mentions, on multiple occasions, the crowd of men AND women flocking to Sam. Just a nice touch that I adore.

Sam is essentially both brains AND brawn. She’s fierce, she’s smart, she managed to make a simple spell that makes a Minor Orb of energy into a damn fucking shield she’s not afraid to use as a means to bash heads in.

And she’s an artist. Who draws. A lot. And I just. Sam feels so real to me and I am so taken with her character.

Of course, she has her flaws too. One that stood out to me was the fact that she can’t seem to back down from a fight. Sure, sounds like an inconsequential thing, but it was a crisis of character for her when she lost BECAUSE she didn’t back down.

She had an entire thing about her mom not being proud of her because she wasn’t good enough and I just choked.

Of course, there’s Tyler. A jock-type who happens to be bi. Reminded me a lot of Cooper from One Of Us Is Lying. Except. Tyler’s not exactly in the closet. He knows what he is and is proud of that and honestly fucking bet.

He doesn’t take shit from anyone too, and isn’t afraid to hold his ground if he needs to. Like. He stood up to Sam in a parking lot early on in the book. At this point, it has already been established that Sam is hell incarnate and is not afraid to kick someone’s teeth in. Sam can do a no hands running leap over a fence!!!

And Tyler stood his ground and looked her straight in the eye. Mad respect for that scene, honestly. The way it’s written makes it so that Tyler doesn’t back down, but he also doesn’t disrespect Sam.

More mad props to Tyler is that Fay is his first relationship with a guy. And he powers through. Sure, he’s nervous, but he still asked. Honestly, more than I could say for myself. It takes a great deal of courage to ask someone out, even more so if it’s the first date.

Tyler is goals tbh. He willingly follows Fay into battle knowing the risks because he doesn’t want to lose Fay. He struggles with his parents getting a divorce, has a lot of his own personal issues that can and will tie my tongue with how much he just continues moving forward. And just.

This man. This man. I have so much respect and feelings for this man. He’s kind and considerate and I just can’t.

While these three are the main characters, there’s a bunch more that Early gives life to.

Aiden, for instance, only appears for a few scenes but damn is he complex. At first, I was all: hot guy. Accent. Foreign. Hot. Holy shit. Then, after the attack on Fay’s home, I switched to “what the fuck?” “what the fuck????” “bitch what the fuck!??!?!??” And THEN, he became more like a rival than an antagonist and just. I can’t.

Good characters are honestly my driving force for reading literally anything, but the plot and mechanics is strong in the book as well.

As I mentioned earlier, the magic is unique. There’s the words but it’s not actually said in the book what those words are. But it doesn’t even matter because you see the characters and how they respond. How the magic responds to them,

There’s a whole scene where Sam and Fay try out spells, figure out what they do, and what’s compatible with them. Spells have compatibility. I really enjoyed the fact that magic in this universe seems alive, ancient, and more than just a hand wave. It feels like it’s part of the caster.

Sam’s minor orbs, for instance, is different from Fay’s. Fay’s looks like a damn snowball, while Sam’s doesn’t. Same spell, different casters = different lookin spell. Wards too. Sam’s ward is standard. Fay’s turns everything that hits the ward into ice. Again, same spell but because the people casting them is different, it changes. It’s a nice touch and makes the world itself come to life.

Fight scenes aren’t prevalent in the early half of the book, but holy shit does things go from 0 to 100 real quick. Aria’s first fight was brutal and I just practically vibrated with excitement when that happened. Motherfucking art.

The entire book is filled with scenes like that, actually. Made me stop, rethink my life decisions, praise every god that I managed to exists in a universe where Aspect of Winter is a thing. I love it. Can’t wait to read the next book (when I get my hands on it) and can’t wait for the third book to come out.

One scene in particular hit me with a mountain of questions and elicited a chorus of holy shits. Felt like I was about to sing Heathers Fight For Me. Right at the very end. I can quote it because it was seared into my very brain.

Bit of context.

The thing with Fay’s very soul bearing some part of winter? Yeah, that was how he managed to chill everything, and make his own ice sculptures whenever he wants. The thing that killed the dullahan. That thing that is such an integral part of him.

It was sealed.

No more ice magic.

Fay described it as feeling EMPTY.

So, you’d think that after being sealed away, the ice wouldn’t manifest anymore right? Whatever thing is inside Fay would stay there and not be a danger to him or to others anymore, right? Fucking wrong. The very last line of the book read as follows:

“Behind me, the stones on the beach were covered in a thin layer of frost.”

Like. Bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!! Either the seal broke, or it wasn’t strong enough.

(Didas is also a shady bitch and I don’t trust him but I don’t think he’ll endanger the lives of everyone quite so easily.)

Either way, winter is fucking coming and I am fucking terrified.

[dailynewswebsite]

‘I choose to be a cyborg’: Why I implanted computer chips in my hands

Cyborgs are individuals with further technological {hardware} related to their our bodies. (Shutterstock)

I’ve pc chips in my palms.

The tiny (two millimetre by 12 millimetre) glass ampules are nestled slightly below the pores and skin on the again of every of my palms and had been implanted by an area physique piercer a number of years in the past.

The chip in my proper hand is a near-field communication machine that I scan with an app on my sensible cellphone to entry and rewrite the knowledge I’ve saved on it. It could actually include a minuscule 888 kilobytes of information storage and solely communicates with gadgets lower than 4 centimetres away. In my left hand is a chip designed as a digital verification machine that makes use of a proprietary app from the developer Vivokey.

The implant process is neither tough nor extraordinarily painful. I can really feel the bump of the chips beneath my pores and skin and infrequently invite others to really feel it. The bump doesn’t protrude from the again of my hand — if I didn’t inform somebody it was there, they’d not be capable of inform by sight that I had an implant. However they don’t seem to be undetectable.

An implanted chip could be a safe storage location for emergency contact info, used as an digital enterprise card, or as an digital key to unlock your door. I give public displays and interviews about my analysis and, consequently, don’t retailer personal knowledge on my chip.

Selecting know-how

There are literally thousands of individuals everywhere in the world with chip implants; individuals I name “voluntary cyborgs.”

Voluntary cyborgs are individuals concerned locally and follow of implanting know-how beneath their pores and skin for enhancement or augmentation functions and I’ve counted myself as a member of this subculture for a number of years. My analysis locally has targeted on the formation of a definite subculture and its representations in well-liked media.

Learn extra: Meet the biohackers letting know-how get beneath their pores and skin

I coined the time period voluntary cyborgs to make a distinction from medical cyborgs, who’ve had know-how — like pacemakers, insulin pumps, IUDs and extra — implanted by medical professionals for rehabilitative or therapeutic functions. I deliberately emphasize the voluntary facet of the implant follow to stave off inferences of coerced microchipping theories well-liked with a vocal teams of implant critics and detractors.

Conspiracy theories about microchips in people have been round for years; a few of these theories originate from an interpretation of a Bible passage.

Conspiracy theories

Clickbait headlines and social media hashtags have been making the rounds with rising frequency in the previous few months, describing the fears and conspiracy theories in regards to the involuntary microchipping of individuals. The most recent incarnation of those doomsday prophecies means that tech billionaire Invoice Gates will make use of microchips to battle COVID-19.

The article was impressed by a Reddit Ask me Something thread with Gates on March 18 that targeted on a single phrase: digital certificates. Conspiracy theorists began to make sensational predictions about microchips as a possible resolution to identification verification points and authenticating vaccination standing.

The proliferation of on-line media articles and posts debunking the declare that Gates plans to surreptitiously implant microchip monitoring gadgets into individuals as a part of a COVID-19 vaccine bolstered the conspiracy theorists.

PBS explores either side of the microchipping debate.

Controlling decisions

These latest conspiracy theories of enforced and involuntary chip implants led me to contemplate why some individuals are anxious about having pc chips embedded of their our bodies towards their will.

The reply lies in perceived physique autonomy.

Analysis in 2017 confirmed 1 / 4 of the American inhabitants believed in conspiracy theories and are these beliefs are pushed by emotions of hysteria, alienation and disenfranchisement.

The best to control one’s physique and what’s achieved to it by others, just isn’t a privilege held by everybody. This realization can come as a shock to those that wish to modify their our bodies with technological implants for comfort, enjoyable or experimentation.

Members of traditionally marginalized teams — girls, racialized individuals, queer individuals, disabled individuals and youngsters — should not shocked at this lack of physique autonomy. The state, organizations and medical communities have restricted, regulated and ruled their our bodies for a whole lot of years.

Cyborg autonomy

One purpose of my work is to focus on the wrestle for physique autonomy via the expertise of the cyborg. The best to morphological freedom — to switch one’s physique as one needs — is one facet of physique autonomy that cyborgs routinely face.

If cyborgs can win the fitting to change their our bodies by redefining the boundaries of acceptable physique modification, then these rights can prolong to different teams combating for bodily integrity and autonomy. Collaboration with students and advocates in incapacity research, queer and feminist research, medical and authorized students in addition to human rights activists is an method to take.

Latest information of involuntary and compelled sterilizations occurring in detention camps run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is horrific and illustrates simply one of many abuses of physique autonomy {that a} authorities can inflict on individuals — residents or in any other case.

Cyborg consent

Implanted chips should not helpful for covert surveillance or monitoring. Present out there microchip know-how just isn’t able to monitoring individuals’s places. There are not any batteries or GPS transmitters each highly effective and sufficiently small to be safely and unobtrusively embedded in our our bodies with out our information.

There isn’t any want for governments or different shadowy organizations well-liked with conspiracy theorists to embed monitoring gadgets inside human our bodies as our smartphones already carry out this perform. Most smartphone customers signed away any expectation to privateness with varied apps and placement providers way back.

Folks say they will at all times go away their telephones at dwelling, however do they actually? It feels as if you’re lacking part of your self if you don’t know the place your cellphone is. The sensation within the pit of your abdomen, you pat your pockets, reaffirming your loss via contact together with your physique. It’s already part of physique assemble.

I don’t worry that I will probably be implanted with a chip with out my information however I’m very involved that folks might in the future be implanted with out their consent.

I fear chips could also be used for overt, unethical suppression of motion by governments. It’s why the fitting to physique autonomy should be a legally declared, worldwide human proper upheld by courts and governments all over the world.

Tamara P Banbury acquired funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council through the course of her grasp's analysis.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/i-choose-to-be-a-cyborg-why-i-implanted-computer-chips-in-my-hands/ via https://growthnews.in

[lebibish]

Dear Yuletide Author 2019,

Happy fall! (Or winter, which it feels like here!) The Yuletide fic exchange is one of my favorite times of year and I am always amazed with the wonderful and lovely stories that come out of it. I absolutely promise—I will love whatever you write because you have put time and effort into one of these fandoms which I adore and which deserve so much more love. So thank you!

(This...got rather long...)

Things I am generally interested in:

-          World building – both cultural shenanigans and language and how does this actually work and let’s dig into the stuff that was handwaved—did I say both? I obviously meant everything)

-          Family feels – found family, kidfic, good sibling relationships, comfort, people you would fight to live for, snarky banter, deep understanding of someone else. Also, I love kidfic. Also, good parenting.

-          Competence – I really, really enjoy watching/reading about/listening to people being really, really good at something.

-          Magic – fairy tale magic, magical realism, that whole social media thread about people having small everyday magics, hidden magical realm, magic school, I love it all.

Squicks, or things I am not interested in: For Yuletide, I prefer not to have unhappy endings. Bittersweet I can handle. Not a fan of cheating in relationships (consensual polyamory, on the other hand, is VERY GOOD.), grim!dark cynicism, unlikable heroes, angry-teenage-boy angst (this does not just apply to teenage boy characters btw, just saying I lost a lot of interest in Harry Potter after book 5. It was good characterization, he had all the reasons to feel that way! I’m just not that interested in reading from his point of view at that point).

That got long, sorry!

Specifics:

Fandom: Horror Movie Daycare (CollegeHumor)

What I like about this fandom: I love kidfic. I love people taking care of kids, being good with kids (even if they’re nervous and unsure of what they’re doing—genuine interest and care goes a long way), and the subversion of expectations in this.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): I am torn between wanting to know Ms. Katherine Daisy’s background (where did she come from? Why is she like this? How does she keep getting these creepy jobs? IS SHE FROM NIGHTVALE?) and wanting her to remain a mystery (particularly, seeing her from an outsider’s perspective—what do the families of her kids think of her? How did they find this daycare? Does she have any coworkers? Neighbors? Family? What do think of her and her job? Do any of the kids she takes care of grow up and come back to visit her?)

 Fandom: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (game)

What I like about this fandom: What do I not like about this fandom? I play as Kassandra—she is pansexual, always down for sex, not great at emotions, totally motivated by family, kind of protective, kind of an asshole, and I head-canon her main relationship being Roxana BECAUSE THAT RELATIONSHIP IS ADORABLE. But I’m more than happy to read other people’s versions of Kassandra too! I love the attention to detail in the culture, I love the connections to Greek mythology, I love Kassandra’s relationships throughout the game (families, friends, lovers…)

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Kassandra in different time periods—they opened up so much room for amazing stories in that plot. Kassandra in the middle ages, messing with the patriarchy. Kassandra hanging out with the all the queer Classics majors at Oxford, (OMFG I just pictured Kassandra meeting Miss Fisher and having sexy, sexy adventures solving murders together), Kassandra in YOUR favorite historical period being her awkwardly kind, aggressively violent self. But also, that opens up so much angst? Because this woman has spent so much time separated from her family and has fought so hard to find them and now she is going to outlive literally everyone? (sort of spoiler warning: Phoebe in the DLC makes me cry so hard and if you want to make that a real thing and bring other people too I WOULD BE SO HAPPY). How does Kassandra cope? I kind of imagine she basically just keeps building families around her over and over again, but I could also see her retreating from getting close to people. ALTERNATIVELY. Kassandra growing up—why does she stay on Kephallonia so long? What is she like as an awkward teen? Kassandra being a big sister to Phoibe. Or. After the main story, I made Alexios one of the crew members on the boat and that was consistently hilarious. I also got the entire family together for that dinner scene—including awkward, angry step-brother together and the family shenanigans of two awkward, angry brothers and AWKWARD AGGRESSIVE Kassandra somehow being the reasonable human sibling is AMAZING.

 Fandom: Sinbad (TV)

What I like about this fandom: I ask for this fandom every year because: people with different cultures and languages coming together and forming a functional group/found family/deep friendships, real mythology being played with, magic hiding in the world as science becomes more prevalent…it’s all amazing.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Sinbad’s original curse—not being able to stay on land for more than a day and what that would mean if they had succeeded in being traders; the possibility that Cook has something strange going on with his own refusal to leave the ship; and post-series what these people end up doing and how they interact. Any and all back-stories are love, any and all myths, legends or monsters entering the story are brilliant.

 Fandom: Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)

What I like about this fandom: Beatrice/Benedict – snark. So much snark. Smart, competent people who are confident, but also insecure in some really specific ways. NOT a fan of Claudio.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Ok, so, I love the original play and I love it’s various incarnations (the David Tennant and Catherine Tate one is amaaazing) but my first introduction and the one I always imagine is the Kenneth Branaugh version. Beatrice/Benedict is my OTP…except. Except. The speech where Beatrice and Don Pedro are talking and he asks if she’d have him and she says no unless she could have another for working days…I want that story. Beatrice/Benedict and their home together becoming a place where Don Pedro goes to rest and hide from the demands of the world (romantic polyamory OT3, platonic friendship, it could play out in so many ways). Or, Beatrice/Benedict going with the Prince. Beatrice having adventures and charming and outraging people everywhere and Benedict and Don Pedro amused and indulgent and jumping in to troll people left and right.

 Fandom: The Pirates of Darkwater

What I like about this fandom: SO MUCH WORLD-BUILDING. All the islands and the magic and the ship (see also, any of the details for Sinbad…). Grumpy thieves and mercenaries who are secretly good people but have bad impulses/habits.

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Since the series was never finished—HOW DOES IT END? Does Ren become a King? Do the islands come together in a diplomatic alliance? Do they save the day and sail off into the sunset? OR Ren growing up. Living with his old guardian in an ancient lighthouse and entertaining himself by being a gymnast—but also, how do you raise a secret heir to a kingdom without letting him know he’s a secret heir to a kingdom? Shove a lot of books at him and cross your fingers? Teach good governance through a series of ridiculous hypotheticals and then hem and haw whenever he says “When will I ever need to know this?”. OR pick an island and explore it . Look, magic, pirates, adventure, mysterious islands with a variety of civilizations...you can't really go wrong here.

 Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)  

What I like about this fandom: Aha. Ha ha. Ok, seriously—time travel, magic, SO GAY, teams, SO COMPETANT, the constant jostling for who gets to sacrifice themselves for someone else this time, other worlds, WEIRD AF worldbuilding (magic? Aliens? Energy beings that are totally not ghosts because the censors don’t like superstition?), TIME TRAVEL, cats, shape-shifters, I will Wait for you, two cultures colliding, hurt/comfort everywhere

What I would love to see (optional details are optional! Tell me a story you’re interested in and I’ll love it!): Fix it fic. FIX IT FIC. Reincarnation? Not actually dead? Someone, something rational and reasonable steps in before tragedy becomes inevitable? PEOPLE GET THERAPY? I don’t care. Fiiiiix iiiiit. AND/OR Shen Wei waking up and negotiating a brand new world—new Dixing and new Haixing. I…kind of prefer that happening much longer than the show makes it seem in the end? Like, I have unreasonable feelings about him waiting 10,000 years to see the love of his life—but I also kind of like the idea of him waking up and being incredibly confused by the culture that has built up in Dixing. Also—more of the actual culture that has built up in Dixing so that it’s not just the desperate poor neighbor but a functional, interesting society that has it’s own traditions and families and no sense of seasons or time but what they designate for themselves (does the lantern change that?) AND/OR I’ve been haunted lately by the idea of the original Kun Lan who we never meet…actually being reincarnated as Zhao Yun Lan?

ALL MY LOVE AND GRATITUDE! YOU ARE AWESOME! I really hope you enjoy this Yuletide!

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Let’s Statistic 4: The Stats Strike Again

Thinking of making this a bi-annual sorta deal.

I have twenty-seven Sims who have been officially placed and ranked in BCs old and ongoing (including Sini), ten who are currently making the rounds, twenty-seven whose BCs or involvements are no longer active or otherwise dubious, and nine in reserve for future competitions or story-based projects. This makes seventy-three Sims in total. Ten new arrivals, four of them reservations. One of them I made just a couple of days before this update came out.

I added a new section to my spreadsheets at the beginning of the year: the Special Snowflake Summation Sheet. This is to head off any more anons who may ask whether any of my Sims aren’t “special snowflakes”. Considering being trans, being queer, and being disabled as the indicators of such, we have twenty-three Special Snowflakes, twenty-three that nearly count, fifteen that barely count, and twelve that do not count. (Mind you, among the twelve, only four - Sammy, Dalibor, Auguste, and Al Wilbur - have “no” in all three slots. All the others have ‘sorta’ or a question mark in at least one field.)

Of the seventy-two, thirty-five are designated as male in-game, while thirty-six are designated as female, and Alex and Eun are still their own thing. That’s two new DMACs (Oz and Octavio) and eight new DFACs; I’m taking care to make the gap between them narrower, as you can see, and until the latest one they were at exactly the same level. I want to maintain this closeness from here on out, however easy or hard that may be.

None of the ten new arrivals so far are cis - literally none. As established in Percy’s profile, I have set myself a goal to, unless absolutely required, never make a cis Sim again, which I have been sticking to quite well so far. (Lisa is the only possible exception, but only possible. Depends how I feel when I release her.) Twenty-seven cis Sims, counting the loss of Percy after the shift to demiguy*, out of seventy-two accounts for 37% of my contestants... or, put another way, 63% of my Sims are un-cis.

If we take into consideration almost all of the Sims I know for certain are not cis (excluding Butch, since Butch does not yet have a confirmed pronoun set at all), nineteen of my non-cis Sims use standard pronoun sets and nothing else, defining ‘he’ and ‘she’ as standard in this instance. Thirteen use a combination of standard and non-standard sets, which includes Sims who have a penchant for all pronoun sets; another thirteen completely use non-standard sets. If we consider ‘they’ to be a standard set in the sense that it’s the most universally accepted NB pronoun, those numbers become twenty-four, ten and eleven respectively.

Counting each explicit pronoun-set use only once, my non-cis Sims have nineteen unique pronoun sets between them, including ‘no pronouns’. This is a ratio of 17 non-standard to 2 standard, or 16 NS to 3 S depending on if you count ‘they’ as standard or not. So gitte would not have heard of a maximum of 89% of the pronouns I use, which I guess is close to the 99% she claimed when she first brought this up?

Fifty Sims are confirmed to be on the LGBTQ+ spectrum through either sexuality or gender identity; thirteen more are assumed to be through any category; Butch and Xyq are unknown. That’s a range of fifty to sixty-five of my seventy-three contestants - 68.5% to 89%.

It’s interesting to note that three.5 of my Sims so far have had their gender or orientation change over time, in an organic sense rather than a ‘this has been clarified when I wasn’t sure before’ sense as with Myron. Calfuray was initially made to be straight, but later gameplay put him as bisexual; Madison was initially cis before becoming a demiwoman early in death; and of course Lyra Maurer’s realization and transition. Percy’s aforesaid shift to demi-guy*, while made before he became a public download unlike the others, still counts as a .5 on the grounds that Clover got access to him before then and played him as cis accordingly, hence there was something there to be changed. 

One could teeeeechnically argue that Castor counts as well, since Castor’s aromanticism was hit upon post-MMBC and public download; I will defend this, though, on the grounds that Cas’ aromanticism is only half of the split attraction model that Castor operates under, and their pansexuality is not affected.

Myron remains the only Sim I have ever had to have been killed specifically for being on the spectrum. (Though Oz was singled out for it, and probably eliminated because of it, he wasn’t killed per se.)

* = For some reason, my spreadsheets are telling me I did this to Peter Jernigan as well, shifted him to demi-guy. The thing is, I don’t remember ever deciding on this directly or setting it in stone with anyone? But it must be something I’ve planned, otherwise the spreadsheet wouldn’t reflect it? So he’s in the ?? category for now. I may make this change explicit once Peter is released to the general public, or I may not. We’ll have to see.

Forty-five of the seventy-three, or 61.6%, are disabled (Skylar has been placed at no, but only for now, so subject to change). Twenty-four of those forty-five have at least one mental disability; twelve have a physical one; two have both; seven are hidden.

The three Sims to join the ‘hidden’ category are Oz, Alice, and Octavio. Oz has undiagnosed bipolar I, and Alice is, as I put it, “Implied to be an abuse victim? How much this impacts nym is up for debate”. So same case as Stellan, really. Octavio is hidden on the grounds that her low empathy could be a symptom of something, but not necessarily, and as of yet nothing else about her neurology is overt.

I have fifteen CAS-intended Supernaturals out of seventy-three; five of the fifteen are witches. (Skylar, despite claiming to be a Nogtail, doesn’t count as a witch in this instance. More on that when ce happens.) The three ‘story’ Supernaturals remain the same; three non-occult Sims join the death-induced Ghosts (that aren’t ghosts in the download file) - Ruya, Jake, and Calfuray Odell, who killed himself early into 2017 by my headcanon.

Thirty-three Vanilla Sims, five van/ban cusps, six Banilla, one ban/berry cusp, and twenty-eight Berry.

Four of the ten news have three pieces of CC, making 13 total (I think I forgot Percy counted as three too with the freckles? Or something like that). Vanilla is the first of my downloadable contestants to break four pieces of CC, but this was mostly for the purpose of showing off the new skin I’d made, and I do not expect this to become the norm. Two pieces is still the majority at 23 out of 73, but three is catching up fast.

Thus far, I feel like this year has been the year of Changing Categories, and taking contestants across multiple projects. Sera’s transferral from her old MMBC to Ostkaka MMBC and Lyra’s clean-up for use in Slaughter or Salvage was made concrete and confirmed, but on top of that: Oz underwent the same process to become a future MMBC host of his own; Percy, Seth del Bosque, and the secret-pending that I still can’t talk about just yet, were officially brought through from what were initially one-shot side projects to be canonized as contestants and future contestants respectively; and Auribus was similarly pulled from first being a Sims 4 baby to then being in line for a Rosey project to then being actually submitted to a melien project.

Of the ninety-eight in-game traits available for my use (discounting Unconventional), I have now successfully used all ninety-eight of them in my Sims. That’s... that’s got to be worth something, right?

I’ve used: ten traits once; thirteen twice; twenty-three three times; twenty-one four times; twenty five times; five six times; five seven times; and one trait a whopping eight times. (Keep in mind I am including contestants I have not officially released yet in my trait calculation.)

My most frequently used trait is Snob: Cashlin, Shabnam, Jake, Jack, Akakios, Hopkin, Lisa, and Percy. Friendly, Hot-Headed and Proper haven’t been used on any more Sims since the last incarnation of the statistics list; but Alice has brought both the use of Good from six uses to seven and the use of Coward from five to seven alongside Vanilla.

Obviousy, Octavio is the most recent Sim to have a unique trait. The rest of the single-use traits are Commitment Issues for Elanor, Hydrophobic for Cree, Handy for Lyra, Born Seller for Casey-Mae, a mistaken use of a bad trait for SLIP, Equestrian for Riba, Heavy Sleeper for Elliot, Loser for Butch, and Animal Lover for Percy. McQuoddy has lost Gatherer to Daisy; Stellan, Loves the Heat to Vanilla; and Karla, Eco-Friendly to Oz.

The Sim with the ‘most unique’ / ‘rarest’ trait distribution is Cree; three of her five traits do not go above two uses each, and the most used one is Daredevil at five. Conversely, the Sim with the traits who have had most use among my set is, of all people, Akakios; her traits do not dip below five uses, and she has both Good and the most-used Snob. (Cashlin technically has more traits with high usage, at two sevens and an eight, but the low-use of Sailor balances out that number.)

All in all, including every single repeat, my contestants share a grand total of 363 traits between them.

Let’s round off by talking about the Fifth Place Squad! It consists of seven Sims as of right now: Midnight, Castor, Lilavati, Stellan, Myron, Cree, and Cashlin. (Shockingly, contrary to my expectations, Cordelia has not made the fifth place squad.)

Five of the seven are ‘special snowflakes’; the other two nearly qualify for such. This is because Lila is the only one among them that is cis, while Cashlin is the only one that is for sure neurotypical and able-bodied.

There is a 3-4 split on the rig in mild favour of DFAC; same for occult distribution in favor of not-ordinary-human (though Cree is the only one to be CAS intended, and she’s an Imaginary Friend); same for coloration in favor of Berry (two vanilla, Myron is banilla).

All of the disabilities among the six of the seven that have them are mental ones, though Castor and Lila are still the two that double up with physical ones, by sheer coincidence!

None of the seven have zero pieces of CC, strangely. Three have one piece; two two, one three, and Castor as usual is the awkward outlier. The CC of four of the seven pertain to custom eyes; an overlapping four, to custom hair. Myron and Cree have both. Cree also holds the dubious honor of having custom hair, skin AND eyes, a distinction they share only with Madison outside of the Squad. 

The most popular traits among the seven have two uses apiece: Daredevil (Castor and Cree), Diva (Castor and Myron), Hot-Headed (Castor and Cashlin), and Natural Cook (Lila and Myron). None of Midnight or Stellan’s traits are repeated among the group.

[bellabooks]

Dear Devon: An ode to the queer heart of “I Love Dick”

By Maddie Ardillo   In many regards, I Love Dick is not a subtle show. Chris (Kathryn Hahn) and her husband, Sylvere (Griffin Dunne), are basically hurricanes of unfulfillment and hunger trapped in human form, while the titular Dick (Kevin Bacon) represents the worst version of what artists can become: “post idea”, refusing to learn and change from those around him, believing himself to have reached perfection, pretentious as all hell. And then, of course, all hell breaks loose. Threaded through the cringe-worthy moments of middle aged people desperately seeking purpose, a younger character quite literally leans into the picture, eavesdropping from behind the door of a beat up trailer, quietly taking in the show, studious, curious. This is Devon — and her story, like Chris’s, is one of obsession. Devon is practically a queer Athena, sprung fully formed from some hivemind of the gayest corners of the internet. She sports a floppy, tousled undercut (in some shots actually resembling Orphan Black’s Felix Dawkins) and boasts in a husky voice the sort of skills that growing up on a ranch in Texas so clearly provides. Also, she’s ripped, so jot that down. As if that weren’t enough, it’s Roberta Colindrez who brings Devon to life, better known as one of the incarnations of Joan, Medium Alison’s “oh my god I’m gay” girlfriend from the musical Fun Home. Although it’s only mildly touched on in the text of the show, Devon clearly bucks all stereotypes of gender from the moment she appears onscreen, and has been described by various members of the cast and crew (including Colindrez herself) as androgynous and even genderqueer or genderfluid. This is not the kind of character I’m used to seeing on TV, and exactly the kind I’ve been waiting (hoping, hungering) to see more of. Naturally, Devon is one of my major selling points when describing the show to friends — but like fellow characters Paula and Toby, Devon appears in only one shot of the show’s trailer, with her eyes focused on the road ahead of her from behind the wheel of a dusty pickup truck. It’s a literal “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” shot — I know I did — but ultimately unsurprising given that the bulk of the show is centered around the unholy trinity of Hahn, Dunne, and Bacon. But Devon won’t be muzzled quite so easily. Although overlooked in the trailer, she digs her heels in with a quiet ferocity over the course of the first season’s eight episodes. Rather than bursting into action like Chris, Devon’s opening scene is one that sets a contrasting tone, a moment for Chris to catch her breath in between earth-shattering disappointments. Setting aside the aforementioned eavesdropping, Devon’s first scene in earnest is one of warning then welcoming, of awkward introduction and then humble generosity. A distraught and burnt out Chris sneaks out in the early morning to smoke, and is welcomed into Devon’s trailer to be chided about being so public when “Presidio County Sheriff’s Department is not fuckin’ cool with that, okay?” Chris blasts right by it, wrapped up in her own personal crises as Devon, with an unfair amount of charm, casually drops one of the lamest lines I’ve ever heard in my life (“handy dandy Mandy”) as her job description before inviting Chris to make herself at home. Devon’s next line is one of immediate appraisal, tsking at Chris’s neon flip flops. She waltzes into the back of the trailer, nailing Chris’s shoe size in one guess, and returns with a pair of sturdy leather boots (yes, really, like some sort of old time saloon Ollivander). Chris insists she won’t need them for long, but in reality she’ll wear them for the rest of the season, through the thick and thin of Marfa and the mess she makes there. Devon, in a moment as casual as it is quietly sweet, has just given Chris the proverbial armor she’ll need when her life goes to shit (well, even more to shit than having her film pulled from a Venice festival). The moment jumps out as special, and yet entirely realistic. If Devon recognizes some sort of kindred spirit in Chris from the half a minute she’s spent in her company, it almost doesn’t matter. She sees that Chris is lacking something, and moves to help. It’s the kind of generosity I’ve witnessed personally and heard tell of endlessly in the queer community; when you’re part of a group that’s been hated and even hunted, you’re more inclined to reach out to someone who’s quite clearly struggling and, if necessary, clothe the naked. Paying it forward isn’t just a pithy saying — it’s a drive, a reality, that the community at its best strives to embrace as often as it can. As Devon roots around for the boots, Chris emerges from the stupor of her own issues just long enough to ask Devon how long she’s lived in Marfa, and is surprised to hear Devon reply “my whole life”. Chris reacts with noticeable but restrained shock. Devon, dressed in this scene as anyone who might be found at a Silver Lake coffee shop, and as masculine in her own way as the show’s title character, was born and raised in the small town that actually lets Kevin Bacon ride around on a horse whenever the hell he wants, a town that revolves around this brawny, husky, soft-spoken white guy? As soon as Devon describes her family as having lived in the area since 1910, implying some long, traditional heritage, Chris glances around the room, and there’s a flash across her wide eyes that reads, “Is that why you live in a trailer?” What she says instead is, “Deep roots.” The deeper you are, the more painful it can be to uproot, a fact and facet of the queer experience that‘s explored in detail in what is often heralded as the show’s breakout episode, “A Short History of Weird Girls”. The storyline is familiar to anyone who has struggled with coming out, with first relationships, with those relationships ultimately crumbling under the pressure of society’s obsession with permanent, rigid labels. Devon experiences love, loss, and the disapproval of her family from childhood to college, ultimately dropping out and wandering into the world to seek to define her own identity as an artist. It’s no wonder then that Devon, recently alone as the episode reveals, fixes her gaze on Chris, supporting her as a stranger, listening to her as a neighbor… a gripping scene of Chris describing the disappointment artists so often face when their work is finally finished captivates Devon, leading to an obsession with Chris’s letters to Dick. The letters become the spine of a play composed by Devon and her friends, reading aloud key lines from the letters, devouring Chris’s words, finding inspiration, strength, madness, will, want, all in a scene that reaches its climax when it literally shatters a brick meant to symbolize perfection as Devon chants “I want to be a female monster”. Hahn, Dunne, and Bacon may form the spine of the show, but it’s Devon and the younger artists at the Marfa Institute that cradle the heart, seeking to create and understand, in whatever forms they can, the world around them, and of course, themselves. While the main storyline pushes the boundaries of marriage, Devon shatters those of gender, sexuality, and intimacy. With every move, every scene, this character gives another standard convention a mean left hook. The scenes, however few, come at moments when the main action needs a breather, or when the gruff, pretentious Dick is just beginning to be tiresome — then, lo and behold, there is Devon, with an unconventional sex scene, a frustrated lecture regarding what she considers a gauche display of performance art, and then immediately following it with an almost violent defense of that display’s right to exist, even though she doesn’t agree with it. In her final scene of the season, Devon leads a dance celebrating the beauty of Marfa’s men, encouraging them to embrace terms previously unattainable to them due to the strict code of the gender binary in small Southern towns. Chris and her husband make a mess out of Marfa. Devon embraces the challenges of the town as an invitation to fix and form her own spaces and community, to redefine art and beauty, love and lust. As counterpoints, they balance the show, forming a tinderbox that one can only hope explodes into sound and fury in the coming seasons. Dear Devon, Do you have any boots in a size 9? I want to be a female monster, too. — MA   You can follow writer Maddie Ardillo on Twitter and Tumblr. http://dlvr.it/P9QDxX

[anthonyreadsthecards]

Hey so I saw you talk about Escaflowne are there other anime that you like and would recommend?

I mean...yeah but I’m what the kids call a “filthy casual” when it comes to anime. I don’t really watch a lot anymore. I think last year I watched like two or three? I can recommend what I like but I’m just gonna warn you now you’re in store for a lot of Magical Girl anime. Read for more if you dare.

So I feel like the first and most obvious anime I would recommend is, of course, Sailor Moon. Now while I don’t normally care for anime that are over a minimum of 13 and a maximum of 30 Sailor Moon is one of the few exceptions. Stacking up at 200 episodes the series has four seasons and overall it’s pretty damn great. Yes there is filler and yes it is a bit dated but people don’t give Sailor Moon enough credit. Our main character Usagi begins the series a little self-absorbed and a huge cry baby but ends with the biggest heart out of everyone and sacrifices her life, more than one occasion I might add, to save the world and those she loves. Plus everyone has a Scout that they can relate to (Neptune is bae) and everyone has their favorite arc (Saturn/Mistress 9 or Nehelenia arc). And while people complain about the filler those episodes are used to round out all of the characters and give each girl their moment to shine. Unlike Sailor Moon Crystal but I’m not getting into that rant today. I prefer the japanese dub because that’s all I really had since the DiC dub was all we had in the States at the time but there is a new dub from Funimation that is very faithful to the original script so whichever you prefer on that end. We also have two movies which are great

Another 90s classic would be Cardcaptor Sakura. I unapologetically love this anime despite it not having aged well in terms of writing. Sakura Kinomoto is our main character who accidently releases the mysterious Clow Cards and she must find and capture the cards or else they’ll wreak havoc. Season 1 is all about capturing the cards and Season 2, the better season imo, is about Sakura becoming the new master of the cards. So the writing is a bit...problematic and this is mostly due to CLAMP’s, the writers for the show and manga, wanting to take the concept of love and seeing it from multiple angles in all of their works. Cardcaptor Sakura is no exception...however there is a lot, and I do mean a lot, of relationships that show age gaps between two characters. Sakura has her crush on her brother’s friend Yukito she’s ten and he’s in high school, Sakura’s dad was a fresh out of college high school teacher when Sakura’s mother was like sixteen or seventeen and they got married after she graduated, and then there’s Rika, Sakura’s classmate, who has a crush on their homeroom teacher and it’s just...sigh. There is a good episode in Season 2 when Yuki finally breaks it to Sakura that she’s way too young for him, besides him having eyes only for her older brother, Toya, and Sakura realizes that she doesn’t love Yuki in the way that she thought before and it’s really good. Nothing is sexualized, everything is cute, and the characters are allowed to feel and express themselves which is you know great. There is also two movies as well as the sequel to the show the Clear Card Arc but I don’t recommend the sequel mostly because nothing happens and it’s mostly used to show how cute Sakura and her boyfriend are...which is a lot I’m not gonna lie they are incredibly cute and I love them. That being said the rest of the series is full of low stakes questions not being answered and a cliffhanger ending and who knows when that’ll get resolved (I’m not bitter I promise). So yeah stick with the OG anime. There was no redub of the show so I would just recommend the Japanese dub.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of my favorite anime of all time. Seriously when I’m super depressed I binge the whole show. This show has a lot going on symbolically and that’s like crack to me. I love deciphering hidden meanings in shows and Utena has that in spades. The show subverts a lot of tropes and gives me so many feels. The show is about Utena Tejo who dresses in the school’s male uniform instead of the girl one. She is a tomboy, good a sports, and pretty decent with a sword come to find out. She duels one of the student council members for Anthy Himemiya the Rose Bride. Anthy, who is just another student at the school, is passed around from duelist to duelist and is treated however her owner sees fit. After winning Utena treats Anthy like a friend and protects her from other duelists so that Anthy can be free to make her own decisions. It’s so good. Like really good. My main complaints come from the loooong walking scenes to the dueling area that we go through every episode but honestly it’s worth. The characters are well written, not all likeable but well written, the animation is pretty, the jokes from the gossip girls are dumb and I love them, and the overall story is just great. We even get queer characters. There is a movie retelling the events of the show but it’s...well...different. I would stick to the anime.

So I you know how I mentioned I like symbolism in my shows? Well one thing that I really like is when it symbolism that involves fairy tales. Princess Tutu while funny when you say the title is another great show with darker things going on in the background than one would assume. In the show we follow Duck, yeah that’s her name, an actual duck that transforms into a young girl due to the machinations of the mysterious Drosselmeyer the author of the fairy tale we are in. This anime deals with ballet which I love and uses dance and music to help Duck purify the hearts of those who have been taken over by darkness. This show gets a bit dark over the course of the series but the hope and light that comes from it by the end is so worth it. 

Ok this is the last magical girl anime I promise. Puella Magia Madoka Magica is amazing, dark, subversive, and soul crushing. I love this show, again, for the symbolism, the characters, the music, the animation, and for how much it makes me cry. There are a lot of allusions to Faust and things get darker well before they get happier but they do get happier by the end of the series. Unless you watch the sequel movie The Rebellion Story and then you’re just left with bitterness and tears. The show was an actual show but then was later split into three movies, just the same show with more details in the animation, but personally the show was just fine with me. 12 episodes long you could get through it in a weekend. Just make sure to bring some tissues along and plenty of comfort food. 

So if you have an interest in RPGs and fantasy but don’t want anything to serious or heavy I would recommend Slayers. In this show we follow Lina Inverse one of the strongest mages of her time and we watch her blow up a lot of things. By episode 2 she gains her first, and constant, follower Gourry Gabriev a dimwitted but talented swordsman who is very sweet and endearing. This show doesn’t really have a plot except Lina and Gourry trying to make money so they can eat and Lina stumbles upon a quest where hopefully she’ll get some gold. This show is mostly an action comedy and boy does it deliver. This show had five incarnations and I still haven’t seen all of it in it’s entirety but it’s pretty great and has a lot of memorable characters. 

 If you want to watch something to mellow you out that also gives you that folklore and fantasy feeling then you should watch Mushishi. We follow Ginko, a mysterious white haired man, who studies and deals with Mushi, spirits...sorta. The show is set in the Edo era...I think and it really gives off this folklore and almost ghost story vibe. Like this would be stories that your great-great grandpa would tell you about when there weren’t so many cities and everything was trees and fields and there was a strange magic to everything. This show is by no means scary. I was really zen throughout most of it. Travis Willingham does great as Ginko and his cadence really helps with that mellow feeling. 

 Romeo x Juliet is what I would recommend anyone that is interested in a love story with a bit of war, destiny, and a whole lot of Shakespeare. This show is set in Neo-Verona which is a slightly futuristic but at the same time not. Lord Montague, Romeo’s father, has murdered Juliet’s family, the Capulets, and rules over the city with an iron fist. Juliet is a badass sword-wielding vigilante and Romeo is a soft cinnamon roll who needs to be protected at all costs. I really loved this retelling of the the classic story and I really hate Romeo and Juliet for reasons I’m not gonna get into as this list is already so long. The interpretations of the characters are different and unique and that alone is worth watch. If you know anything about Shakespeare you’ll catch the references to all of his other works, the bard himself even pops up in the show which was wonderful, and the even include several scenes where people speak in iambic pentameter, especially Ophelia. My only complaint about this show is the main musical theme which is “You Raise Me Up” by popular by Josh Groban and as a person who really doesn’t like Groban this was almost a deal breaker for me. Thankfully the song is sung by women in English and in Japanese and, when used appropriately, it really made the show feel as dramatic and epic as the original play. 

So if you like Dynasty Warriors, hyperactive cute boys, explosions, adorable father-son moments, a rivalry that borderlines on romantic relationship, and a bad guy who literally travels with ominous music and a death storm then Sengoku Basara is for you. Ok so when I first saw this show I was surprised how quickly I fell in love with it. Like it’s so stupid with how campy and action packed it is and I loved every second of it. We follow historical Japanese soldiers and fighters in their quest to defeat Oda Nobunaga the Demon King. Like most of these people actually existed but we gave them elemental superpowers and pumped up the action to the extreme. I don’t have much else to say except it was a wild and fun ride from start to finish. 

And I think that I’m gonna end this with Fate/Stay Night:Unlimited Blade Works. Having seen the original Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero I can say that UBW has enough from both series for people to find something to love. Also you don’t need to have knowledge of any of the other works to get into this series as it is a retelling of the original story. You say Fate/Stay Night was originally a visual novel with three routes. The Fate Route, the Unlimited Blade Works Route, and the Heaven's Feel Route. The first route is considered the “best route” as pretty much everyone survives it, the second there are some casualties but overall it is the actual best route because one of our main characters, Shirou, isn’t a complete idiot this time around, and the third and final route is super depressing and holy shit who wrote this? UBW is full of action, historical figures...again, great animation, great fight scenes, and a pretty good story. 

And that’s my ten sort of broad animes that I would recommend. I think that you’ll probably find something that you like in all of this especially if you like magical anime. 

Take care