#man doesn't like authority

[5paceacer]

Been dying to make an oc from The Bunker of a soldier that was situated with Augustin and Henri's platoon but like,,, he's a big scruffy man,, probably had gotten himself into a lot of bar fights before he was drafted

Might draw him later, just wanting to get it off my mind

[odo-apologist]

Alright I know that the whole "Alexander the Great's chief eunuch" bit is already a lot to unpack and (rightfully!) has garnered a lot of attention but I think we do too quickly gloss over that Rimmer found this out by "getting friendly" with a hypnotherapist he's on a first name basis with?? Like am I crazy or is that crazy too

[mariesbee]

i need whatever they put into kendall knight injected into my veins. especially big time audition kendall, he was 1 step away from beating the crap out of gustavo (lmao) that's not to say that i don't absolutely love the softer kendall we get almost literally from episode 2 and onwards, he's a sillier, softer-edged version of himself, just like bad boy kendall is his existing personality cranked up by like 20% and we do get moments later on where his bta edge comes forward, just not as strong.

i just. have a lot of feelings about him as a character

[waitineedaname]

She couldn’t believe she thought the worst thing that could happen was embarrassing herself in front of rich people. Hell, she thought the worst would be that Yue Qingyuan would see her, make some quick mental connections, and get her ass fired! No, the reality was much worse. Fuck, Mobei was going to kill her.

here's the wlw moshang I've been working on for a while! please enjoy MBJ getting kabedon'd by a woman who's a whole foot shorter than her

[sugar-grigri]

If Fumiko is monstrous then Fujimoto should start presenting her as such

Fumiko is written to remind us that Denji is a child, and I repeat, she is the symbol of a child's sexual trauma in all its horror and "paradoxes".

Touching Denji without his consent, catching an adolescent who hasn't yet discovered himself off guard, is the most obvious way of proving the link between the theme of sexual assault and Fumiko, but it doesn't stop there.

The fact that Denji accepts only proves this point: it shows just how much he's someone who needs boundaries and protection. He passively listens to what he's told without question simply because Fumiko has the upper hand.

She has one, but spends her time pretending she doesn't, in particular by disguising her age like a predator, calling him "senpai" when she's 22, and playing up her protective role as a "bodyguard" when she's only there to stop Denji thinking for himself

As can be seen in the dialogue between Miri and Denji, she positions herself as an interlocutor, standing in Denji's shadow, influencing his decisions and distracting the boy from the substance of Miri's message.

But she's a complete paradox, still trying to make Denji believe she's protecting him, she refers to Chainsaw Man as a "child", which rather than demonstrating a good intention shows that she's well aware of what Denji is and that she's abusing him head-on.

Who protects a child by attacking him?

Once again, I insist, these are two pages from the same chapter. Dare you tell me that Fumiko doesn't present any contradictions?

Above all, she makes it seem as if she only wants what's best for Denji, even when he hasn't responded to her pleas for help. Once again, there's a paradox: the predator blames her victim for not having seen her own vulnerability, whereas she’s only abusing those of her victim.

Fumiko is a metaphor for the very dangerousness of sexual assault, gentle on the surface but insidious, its violence only made clear and felt after the event, rising like a tide.

When Yoshida convinces Denji to give up his normal life, he leaves him in the hands of Fumiko, a public hunter, who symbolises the extent to which, despite the monster in front of them, danger also exists among men, and that the milieu of public hunters is a harmful world for a child.

I think the reason Fujimoto doesn't immediately place Fumiko in a position of condemnation is to instil a feeling of frustration and powerlessness at seeing Denji unprotected, to make it clear that "he's missing something", a parental figure.

But I think that for the writing to be complete, the author has to take a clear stance on the subject, in his own way of course, but explicitly

Seeing Fumiko next to Denji makes me anxious, it's such a common form of violence that it pulls me out of my reading.

Fumiko is a monster, so I pray that Fujimoto will have fun explicitly detailing her dark side and her horror.

If he doesn't, then she'll remain an unfinished and confusing chimera, the result of lazy writing and a fear of commitment.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

The Spider And Her Demons

YA Australian urban fantasy/horror

about a Malaysian-Chinese girl who’s half spider-demon, just trying to keep her head down and survive high school

when she accidentally kills and eats a man in front of the most popular girl at school, they strike up a strange friendship and she starts to learn more about herself and the supernatural world

aroacespec/sapphic ish

[lambda-core]

I am way too tired/jetlagged to make this post right now, but the reason Armada Starscream is so specifically well done to me actually isn't just the way he's got more depth than just wanting to take over Megatron. It's the way he falls back on this image he has of himself as someone who is solely focused on Megatron. And he is obsessed with Megatron, but the disconnect between Starscream and his image of himself is what gives him actual depth.

The reason this is so cool to me is like, that self-image--that he is single-mindedly obsessed with Megatron and will sacrifice everything else for that goal, no matter who gets hurt--is pretty close to what every other Starscream is. (The selfishness you associate with Starscream is a little more subtle, but it's there in the "no matter who gets hurt" clause imo.)

So if you go into this as a Transformers fan, you're already expecting Starscream to betray Megatron and try to best him and rule the Decepticons. But so does Starscream, even when he's demonstrably proven to both his peers and the audience that he's more than that. It's almost like his past incarnations--or the audience's expectation of him--haunt him. It turns his own internal man-versus-self conflict into this really cool man-versus-narrative conflict.

And what's crazy about this is, through the last moments of this arc, Starscream does grow beyond the narrative we'd expect from other Starscreams! But he never admits that to himself, because it's easier for him to cling to the idea that he's laser-focused on his hatred of Megatron. Every time he helps the minicons--every time he helps the humans--even in his last words, he LIES to himself and everyone around him that everything he did was always about Megatron. Because it's easier to simplify himself than to grasp that he might be a complex character. Because he's a person and he has all the messy conflicts that come with that. He falls back on the same ideas every single other Starscream did, and THAT is his undoing. Not that he is self-centered because he's Starscream. Not that he is obsessed with Megatron because he's Starscream. That he THINKS he is all of those things and he will not LET himself be anything else.

I would argue that that's a bigger theme in Armada, as well. Optimus and Megatron more or less spend their final fight coming to terms with their story roles in Transformers. I really feel like if you sneezed on them, they would realize they do this in every universe and in every timeline. Starscream's is the most interesting example to me, though, because he's such a departure from other versions of Starscream; hell, he acts (and looks, lol) a lot more like some incarnations of Thundercracker. But he's still got classic Starscream in him in this roundabout meta reference. He's like an homage to his namesake. It's so cool! And it works perfectly with the story he's a part of.

[brookstolemybrand]

People really are overcomplicating the Yamato gender question.

I'll make this as simple as I can:

You don't have to figure out what Yamato's """real""" canonical gender is.

Yamato says he's a man. You can just listen to him and accept that he's a man. You don't need to come up with a whole ass new theory of gender for this, you don't need to pull out the conspiracy board, it's okay.

For the purposes of deciding what to call him: it does not matter why he chose to become a man, it only matters that he did.

[deadboyswalking]

People who write good fic when English isn't their first language are pretty amazing, you know? Expressing these complex emotions and really, deep character studies, in a language that isn't your native language is a difficult task. Does the dialogue always sound like a native speaker? Well, no, but a lot of native English speakers struggle badly with writing dialogue too. And anyway, there are some other interesting benefits to reading things written by native speakers of other languages. When they write in English, they still bring their cultural perspective and references from their first language into the fic. This gives a really unique view of characters and plotlines, like I always walk away with a new way of understanding the canon story that I hadn't thought of before.

[gxlden-angels]

Bro I hate fundamentalists and culturally-fundie parents they'll say shit like "spare the rod spoil the child am I right haha yea my parents used to have to beat my ass with a switch almost everyday but I sure did learn my lesson" but like??? no you didn't??? you were hit multiple times for something you very obviously did not, in fact, learn

Like studies about how harmful even lightly spanking children is aside, you're literally contradicting yourself?? Some even admitted they got worse as they got older cause they wanted to see how far they could push their parents before they got punished

And studies not aside, you're gonna get child raising advice from the same book that tells you to stone your wife if her hymen doesn't break on your wedding night instead of the decades of research we have now?? Just say you're a bad parent and move on my guy. Skill issue

[tumblezwei]

I think the worst thing so far that's come out of the whole jelloapocalypse situation is idiots who think that he tanked his career ~intentionally~ to whistleblow about localization companies being bad, and not because he wanted to go on a rant about how much he hates a fictional 15 year old girl and her author

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT,

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I absolutely love the recs you've given (you've introduced me to tomione, and I love it!) and I was wondering if it's possible to give you some recs in return? There are some books and fics that definitely have dramione / got vibes, and I was wondering if I could share them with you!

So glad you've enjoyed them! Feel free to rec me anything you want. I've read most of the classic recs in terms of fic and adjacent content (Cruel Prince et al), but I'll try anything that's well-written. My tastes run towards weird and/or audaciously creative stuff, and I can forgive a lot of weaknesses in plot on the grounds of (1) ambition or (2) character work. My turnoffs are instalove, protagonists who can't fail, and most Y/A (I'm not a hater, I swear, I just need characters who can say "fuck" when their leg gets chopped off.)

I'm also a fan of weird and fucked-up dynamics.(Wuthering Heights was my favorite book for a while, and as a teenager I wrote an AU in which the book ends on a long sex scene where Heathcliff fucks Cathy's ghost and then immediately gets murdered by Catherine 2.) Obviously, I am very normal.

[lotus-duckies]

the kokotiam being so blatantly identified as Children on this planet is striking

like oh yeah these guys are like 15 and Gardu messing with them by saying his Big Cat eats people is giving me flashbacks

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

Pakal-Ná in Chiapas in Mexico is a poem, a bloodletting, a roadside memorial, a wish. Laughter echoing from inside a dark place. Blinding heat. Clothes wet with jungle. Railroad ties shiny and smooth from a million frantic footsteps. It is the sun reflected off sharpened metal. A rooster screaming. A man screaming.

–jason de león, Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling (x)

[belethlegwen]

The Stranding - Chp 68 - O Captain, The Captain

Good morning my friends,

It has been... =looks at calendar=

Y'know what, we're just gonna ignore that.

The Stranding has been updated for all of your reading pleasure <3 As a vague celebration of me finally being finished with the moving-out aspect of my current life stage.

I can't promise that I'll have more time to write, or that I'll even get what I have currently written up on any kind of a schedule, but. I have this, and I am proud I managed to scrape out this much in the turmoil of everything since December 27th.

Please enjoy <3

[nyan-bynary]

I'm gonna have to wait out a few weeks to be able to complain about jjk's ending bc rn half the ppl are bashing everyone who expected more as ppl who just wanted gojo back