#math queer wisdom

[gay-otlc]

Note: Even if in retrospect you don't think you were actually attracted to a certain gender that you labelled yourself as attracted to (for example, you identified as bisexual but later realized you were never attracted to anyone and now identify as aroace), vote as though you actually were attracted to that gender. If poll options did not have character limits, it would be worded "I considered myself to be attracted to [gender]" and that's the way it's meant to be interpreted. So the person in the example above would vote "Previously attracted to multiple genders, now attracted to none"

Another note: The first option is supposed to say "gender(s)", I typed it wrong, I'm sorry

*for example, went from identifying as a lesbian to a straight man

**for example, went from identifying as a straight man to a straight woman

***for example, went from identifying as a gay man to a lesbian

This is something I was wondering about, since I know a lot of people whose sexuality labels have changed before and after coming out, and I felt like doing a tumblr poll about it

[timdrakecoffeemug]

Do you think that Freddy casually turns into Shazam Jr to use the wisdom of Salomon for scholar purposes and discovers stuff about superheroes?

Like "oh this math homework now will be easi— oh my Bruce Wayne is Batman?!"

But then the moment he shifts back he forgets what was so exciting about googling Bruce Wayne or his children and he's like "??? Well I guess Pedro and I were just being queer together again".

And, at the batcave, Bruce and the others have mini panic attacks when the batcomputer alerts there's an specific location on Philadelphia that's constantly looking for Bruce name's alongside Batman, or videos of Robin, Red Hood and all of them, and then searching pics of Damian, Jason and the rest, but then quickly the searching stops like nothing.

[cupcake-torture]

Things people (and canon) seem to forget about Captain America (Steve Rogers) (an old ass man)

Facts

• Dude was born in 1918

• Time alive (not including ice bucket challenge) = 1918-1943 [INSERT 68 YEAR GAP] 2011-2023

What he missed

• The atom bomb

• The cold war

• Civil rights movement

• Anything space travel

• Women's rights

• Lgbt rights

• Really anything to do with a computer and the internet

• Rise of neo-nazis

Based on this. He is like your grandfather's father. Imagine teaching that old bugger the new world WITHOUT him seeing its evolution.

Based on the list above he would (at least for a good long while after being out of the ice.)

Be racist

• Black and coloured people did not have rights when he was iced. Them having rights would at the VERY LEAST confuse the fuck outta him

• The N-word was commonly used before the civil rights movement. It was not known to be a bad thing to say. It was more a statement of fact.

• Also black people were not seen to really be PEOPLE during the time so take that as you will.

Be sexist

• Women didn't have rights at this time. Sure they had more than black people but at the time when Steve got iced they were still fighting for the right to vote.

• It would be almost natural for Steve to not take women seriously. (Although I imagine Peggy took some of this out of him, but we're being realistic).

• He would also probably be very Victorian man being shown an ankle about how women can dress today. (God imagine him seeing a bikini for the first time)

• He also wasn't around for the lobotomy so I like to imagine him being fucking repulsed about the medical negligence and endangerment of American lobotomies (shokingly European ones weren't as bad. I REPEAT: WERENT *AS BAD*)

be homophobic

gay people didn't really 'exist' at this point in time so I doubt steve would be all the knowledgeable in all of it

that is to say, he is Christian, being gay is quite openly a sin in most Christian interpretations, and my boy wants to do right by God.

he also wouldn't get all this gender stuff. it was never a thing for him. at least 'queer' was a word when he was around.

be fucking useless with technology

I can clearly envision steve giving tony multiple aneurysms as he shows him his inevitably virus-filled computer ("HOW? HOW DO YOU HAVE MORE VIRUSES THAN ACTUAL PROGRAMS???" "but this man said he needed to fix my email...")

the most this man used was a typewriter (so he would be infinitely better at typing on a computer than a phone)

he also was iced before modern calculators, so he would have used an adding machine at most

yet again this man is 100 and missed most of technology being made. this is not his fault, but it will still happen.

not be all that book smart

so this guy would've been... *counts on fingers* 11 when the great depression hit. so maybe 5-6 years of schooling before he would have dropped out to work because great depression

also anything he learnt in school would probably be false by now (even maths has changed since then)

I am NOT saying he's not smart. i know he's smart with military stuff and all that, but he's more a wisdom guy than an intelligence guy y'know?

would not swear

swearing wasn't really a thing in the '20s - '30s so yeah...

he would have some weird ass slang tho, and I do not doubt that tony would give him all the shit for it

(from knowledge acquired by reading the great gatsby) he would use the words probably, but more literal (like 'bitch' for female dog)

honestly be shamed for america allowing nazis to continue to exist

half of dude's life in the military was punching hitler. i think this would be pretty self-explanatory.

i think he would like how germany goes about having it all be against the law tho. he'd support that 100%.

I WANT TO SAY THIS JUST IN CASE ANYONE MISUNDERSTOOD ME. i do not believe that steve would be a bad person on purpose. he is simply a product of his time. i thoroughly believe that when pointed out, he would do his best to become better, to learn more, and to be accepting. what I am saying is that it will take time, and many trip ups, and honestly, I think that would have been a really cool thing to bring up about how much culture has changes in less than 100 years. the MCU really only brought up the technological differences and I think it would have been cool to explore this. (I am aware some things can't happen because slurs are age restricted, but still, cool concept.)

anyways, if you got this far, thanks for reading this unintentional essay. have a nice day.

[rerhapsody2]

Okay sooo Leighton Murray yap session incoming.

Rambling About How Much I Like Her

For starters, I love Leighton. I love her a little bit too much, but she's so silly & I think she deserves her own ramble post.

I really love the growth she went through over the show. She started off as this really nasty rich girl, and now she's a rich girl who knows & understands that she's privileged.

But I also love the little random scenes of her being a good friend & a good person, especially since she at the beginning she acted like she didn't like the girls. For example, her sneaking Kimberly her credit card so Kimberly's mom wouldn't have to pay for dinner. Or the way she did Kimberly's hormone injections, drove her to the procedure, and took care of her for a bit.

I also love that she's not just 2D, and her interests aren't just stereotypical for someone like her. Yes, she likes shopping & rich girl stuff, but she's also into math. (Which I think is cute, especially how she tries to deny it all the time) And her personality still shines through regardless, like making the professor make a big deal out of her being the highest scorer on that test.

Leighton & Alicia

I feel like these two dorks were a cute couple, but I don't know how I feel about them getting back together. Alicia claims to be this big ally of other queer people & she runs the women's center, but she constantly tried to make Leighton come out. Mind you, Leighton has only started exploring WLW relationships in college. She's known that she's liked girls for a while (she admits this when she's in the doctor's office with Kimberly & she says she was scared she was going to come out to her parents after her wisdom teeth removal) but she never "acted" on it until college.

Leighton has always been perceived as a cishet white rich girl. And one of her biggest fears is that coming out was going to other her & being queer was going to be her only personality trait (to others) instead of Alicia comforting her she basically says either come out or break with me.

I completely understand Alicia's concern about being closeted again, but that was no reason for her to treat Leighton like that after she knew she was Leighton's first real relationship. It blows my mind that Kimberly was a better ally to Leighton & she's not even queer. It was Alicia's right to break up with her, but bare minimum, she could've guided Leighton through this & gave her advice. Or she could've explained that being queer didn't have to be her whole personality & Leighton was still a 3D person despite her sexuality. (But I digress)

Leighton & Tatum

I feel like they were a less toxic couple & Leighton's little crush on her was extremely cute. Like the way she specifically went out of her way to play tennis to try to impress her. And I really like how Tatum treated the whole "coming out situation". She reassured Leighton that they could take it slow & validated her feelings. (Which is what Alicia should've done)

I also like that they chose that as an opportunity to show Leighton's growth. She finally stands up for what she thinks is right, and stands by her friends. I think it could've been a good time to have Tatum grow as a person along side Leighton, but they put her back with Alicia so whatever.

Leighton's Flaws

Leighton is like every other character & real person, she has flaws. She has done stupid stuff, but I feel like that doesn't take away from how much she's changed.

Like the first episode, where she berates her old "friends". Obviously, it was her fault they didn't want to room with her, it could've been nice to have her realize that she was the problem in that situation. Or reflect on it later in the season if she ever randomly bumped into them.

They also could've had a moment where she realized money can't fix everything. (Beside the community center thing, because she literally got a girlfriend out of that) Like she gets into trouble, or she tries to help somebody else get out of trouble & they sit her down & tell her that money can't fix everything in the world.

And the way she handled the disease situation sucked. Yes, whoever gave it to her didn't tell her, but she didn't have to do the same to another innocent girl. She definitely should've taken that girl aside, had an open conversation, and still paid for the meds.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

A queer reflection for Trinity Sunday

There’s something queer about a Triune God. 

How can one Being also be three Persons? The math doesn’t seem to add up! Some spend years attempting to articulate this theology in a way that doesn’t fall into “heresy”; others give up with a laugh and accept it as a Mystery. Ultimately, the God of the Universe is ineffable, beyond our understanding — yet we are called to seek ever deeper relationship with God, and promised that if we seek, we will find.

When people decry queer identities as nonexistent, overly complicated, or paradoxical, I can’t help but think of our impossible Three-in-One God. I think also about my own gender journey: how I struggled as a child to name what I was feeling because I had no language to describe it; how once I discovered others had words for what I was experiencing, I delighted in every one I could uncover; and how, ultimately, even my favorite words I’ve found to describe myself fall short. 

Words like trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer certainly help others understand and relate to me better — but I’ve learned to be okay with the fact that they might never fully know me, just as I may never fully know them. Turns out that the children of a Mysterious God are micro-mysteries in ourselves!

What I’m left with is this: if we worship a Triune God, why do we try to squeeze the humans made in that Infinite, Ineffable Being’s image into two narrow boxes? And if we celebrate how, in the Incarnation and Resurrection, Divinity burst through the binaries between Creator & Creation, Life & Death, surely the binary between male & female isn’t so insurmountable!

Together, let us pray:

Holy God, whose very existence is relationship, we marvel at your mystery. Protect this day and always those of your children who, like you, defy easy definition and resist restrictive categories. Teach us to recognize your wisdom and holiness shining within them, for only together in all our diversity do we reflect your image. Amen.

___

Further reading:

An opening worship prayer to the queer God with diverse children

An affirmation of faith in the God whose very existence is relationship

Some more cool queer posts about the Trinity

Envisioning the Trinity as a divine dance

A lovely excerpt about what it means to be in the image of God

[legofanguy1999]

LGBT Pride wisdom

A LGBT story featuring a intersex high school girl, which is a tough challenge for me as a writer as I have never write a intersex character before, for a entry of @thepromptfoundry Pride and Promptudice prompt wisdom.

As a Sophomore in her high school, Katherine is reading a science book for her homework in her bedroom when the doorbell rings and Katherine wonder how could be at her place around 5 before she realized whose it could be just before her mother called, "Kate, Helena is here." Katherine groans as she got up and step out of her room to see Helena Griffex, one of the popular girls in their high school, whose is under a study session with Katherine as her tutor to improve Helena's grades. The fact that their home room choose her was something that Katherine didn't like because Helena and her group of friends would bully her when no staff was around since Katherine is a intersex girl, which means Katherine is a mix of a girl and a boy. This was something that these bullies discover because one of those girls was in the girls' bathroom at high school and take a picture of Katherine's private parts from the other stall while Katherine was just to peeing like a man. Katherine's lead Helena to her bedroom and said to the girls, "Have fun studying, girls. Dinner is at 7." and leave the girls in the bedroom which Helena said to Katherine once the door is closed, "Don't get any idea, freak." and a anger Katherine begins her studying with Helena.

About a hour has passed during Katherine and Helena study session and both girls was not making easy for each other in their redo of Helena's failed math test, which the brown hair Helena said, "Alright. We are going nowhere. I can't handle this. I know that the other girls are going to have great jobs while I will getting a poor job, all thanks to you, freak." and that cause Katherine to finally explore as she yell at Helena, "Enough of this! You and the other girls has always mock me for the past weeks! I don't get why you bully me, because I was born different. Why don't you pick on someone else for a change, or better yet do some studying instead of hanging out with those girls so you can even get good grades?" and this made a anger Helena to yell back, "That is because I don't want to be a target for my sexuality!" and froze as Katherine's face to surprised over what Helena just said as her mind run over what she hear, 'Helena... is a queer?' The queer bully whose out herself step back and start to explains, "I guess it started when I was seven years old and I begin to realized that I like both goys and girls the moment that I watched Aladdin and I saw how hot that Jasmine and Aladdin were as they were not covering up their skin. However, my parents show their disapprove of me liking girls and I have been keeping that hidden since then, holding them in in my elementary and middle schools years. I even joined Pamela's Mean Girls group to fit in and to keep myself safe. Things start to changed when one of the girls show me that picture of your manhood and I realized how awesome you are. You were like this real life version of this cool intersex character in this manga I read this one, but Pamela didn't like your difference and emotion forced us on bullying you and we have to fall in line, or else we become Pamela's next target. You have to be the punching bag of the girls' jokes so I wouldn't suffered. You were right that I didn't have time to study because I scare of what would happen if Pamela find out who I'm in the inside. I'm so sorry, Kate. I miss you will forgive me for what I did." Katherine realized that her hate for Helena was wrong and said to her, "I'm sorry too, Helena." and the two girls kiss each other.

The next day, Katherine and Helena reveal the bullying to their homeroom teacher and the transgender woman said, "I understand, girls. I knew from experience what it was like, so I pair you girls up in hope that you would find a way to formed a friendship with each other. It is important to be wisdom about what others must feel." After that, Pamela and the other bullies get Detention and Pamela start to lose her control over the other girls once they see that Helena is not afraid of showing who she is since she start dating Katherine, and those girls become Katherine's friends, with more joining their friends' group. Katherine and Helena life in high school and grades improved, as well their love life, ever since they take each other virginity, but that is a story for other time.

[backwardblackbyrd]

✌🏼 2 things.

1. i THINK i sluethed out why my father thinks my place is ugly and why he's being weird about it. he drove 30 minutes here and thirty minutes back to sit uncomfortably on my couch and tell me a random story about a homophobic lady in Walmart for 15 and then leave.

i genuinely think he looked at my place and went 'a man would never want to live here' and then like. the math started mathing...... which like. he's not wrong but he's also not right lmao. i'd date a guy again but he'd HAVE to be queer so like. he'd like my place :3

and 2......knock on wood but my teeth feel pretty good! my wisdom teeth were so busted i think it made them easy to yoink. i have only eaten yogurt, mac n cheese and soup and ice cream and my inner 8 year old is #living but my inner adult stomach??? babes

[bluewinnerangel]

Stay with me please, cause I’ve been reading about melting clocks and I’ve found some things.

One of them is about the meaning of melting clocks tattoos. We know that Louis and Harry have their story tattooed on their body and they know what those symbols mean. A melting clock tattoo can mean “wisdom. This is the meaning for anyone who is known to look outside the box.” “People will also get their melting clock tattoos to show that time passing does not bother them at all.” “Mystery is yet another great meaning that is often attached to the melting clock tattoo. You can be sure that people will wonder who you are if they see the melting clocks on your skin since it is such an interesting image and one that most people simply don’t understand.” He’s doing grey with the last one meaning tbfh. “The hands on the melting clocks are often pointing at a specific time that serves as a representation of something significant to the individual.” If you do maths, the 2 melting clocks result are 3,6,9. Something significant that we don’t know but okay.

The second is about Dalí - he was a surrealist artist and “Jokes, humor, sarcasm and wordplay play an important role in Surrealist art.” and that’s part of Louis’ personality. “Surrealists often mocked the trends and fashions of middle-class society in their paintings. (…) Perhaps Dali was similarly poking fun at the pocket watch trend in The Persistence of Memory (…) .” We know how much Louis loves of mocking trending things. Also, this “While the painting's true secret meaning is uncertain, Salvador Dali most likely knowingly encrypted all of these layers of historical, artistic, social and autobiographical meaning into this mysterious, enduring work of art. There may be even more layers of meaning hidden (…) that we haven't found yet.” Like, we’re well aware of that Louis, there are even things about the bears or JLY that we haven’t found yet.

Bonus: the twilight zone, which was something people thought about yesterday, is “an area where two different ways of life or states of existence meet.” Two different ways of life - he being queer and in a relationship vs he being straight with a son - 2 different realities that Louis is known for.

Bonus 2: There’ve been a lot of doors and there’s an idiom “when one door closes, another opens” and all the symbols can be interpreted as him being a target of a reality that he’s not part of during more than 10 years but he’s breaking all of that and he’s reinventing himself, he’s during a process of rebirth that will end with freedom.

Bonus 3: He googled ‘crazy symbols and theories’ and put them together to mess with us and creates a conspiracy theory.

[kacchania]

(EM)

You all suck ass and suck glass

Like a fucking

Math lab

Gonna fuck you up,

Bitch,

Now it's last class

Cause you're all fucking daft

So I'ma mash that

And subtract that,

Like bitch,

This is Math class!

Eat a Kraft pack

Flash a dashed draft

Oops, we matched that!

(Actually, more like mathed)

Yo Mike, I dislike you

And I wanna strike you

And I wanna fight you

And I wanna Like you

(Ayo, that's kinda gay)

Yo bro,

Is it gay if you say

I beat off to dudes in anime

And I prey

On ya cock

And ya mom

(Chorus Mike)

Ayo Em,

That's kinda fem

You're a weird queer and maybe

You should just disappear

Before I hear

About your career

You got me fearing for my rear

Like, that fear is severe

That you'll appear

And be near

Maybe you shouldn't interfere

Yo, it's Em again!

Old friend,

You're offending and spending

So you can go and pretend that

You're feared and

That you're leery

And sceery

But really,

You're the joke

And I fucked ya hoe

And I fucked ya bro

Now bend over

So you can descend into

Me fucking your back end and

Then I'll apprehend you

And then you'll blend into amends

But by then

You'll be condemned

'Cause you said that we ain't friends

But last night

You was something different

Last night, you was a

Bitchin'

But of course,

In the end,

I'll fuck your bitch

Then your head

'Cause it'll be cut off

'Cause you didn't comprehend

That we are friends

But not any longer 'cause

You're dead

And I'm alive

And I'll be getting all this

Bread and head

From yo bitch

And yo sis

'Cause she shed her true skin

She a cocksucker

Just like your mom is

And your dog is

And your socks

(Em chorus)

I'll screw the socks off you,

So if you don't

Like it then,

You shouldn'ta screwed

Me in the first place

'Cause now, look who in third place

While I'm in third base

Fucking her ass straight

(Em final)

Damn, friend..

Coulda been avoided

If you kept ya mouth shut

Isn't that right, Glen?

Oh wait

She can't speak, and guess why?

(Mike)

Yo

All out, dogs out

So nigga

Watch who you talk to,

Man you is a bird

A pigeon at that

You white fuckin bitch,

Thinking you black?

Short midget,

Thinking he the shit and

He really not, he's just a

Pigeon

I'm tired of you white rappers

Infiltrating black slappers,

ya damn cracker!

'Cause really, you're just a Jasper!

A Casper who won't last long

And by tomorrow,

you'll be the one being

Forgotten

And lost and

I'll be the one fixing yo

Bitch in the back seat and

She gonna be real needy

Gonna need my seed in her

Yo, your bitch hit me up last week

Talking some "He don't fuck me!"

Man, you really is gay

How you think a gay white man

Is gonna make it as a rapper?

That's right

Yo ass is a gay cracker!

Looking up to trans lands

Bitch, you should be hit by a train

So that it could rain

With yo blood

And I could take yo lane!

(M FINAL)

This non nigga really thought

He could take me

Knowing that I

Fucked his bitch in HD 3D

All my fans love me

Meanwhile your fans are

dis-gust-tang!

(SNOOP DOG)

Yo,

Look at these niggas doing their

Bitching!

Not knowing that they're victims

Of a system

But I got wisdom!

Tryna warn these niggas

That they're being hitmen

Against each other

Like really nigga?

I thought you was better then that

Turns out, y'all just wack

And that's fact

All y'all do is cap

[gay-otlc]

Curious about what age is "normal"

[apelcini]

💋🌹 🔥🍊📙😊⭐💛 🌳🍐💙🌸💗 ik it's a lot sorry sdghf letting you decide which oc you wanna do

💋 How affectionate are they with their friends? Their family? Their romantic partner(s) (if they have any)? Are they more physical or emotional when it comes to displaying their affection? Why?

Mymlanslös is aloof and withdrawn, but that’s actually a good thing for her. Back when she lived with her mother she had to shout and fight and scrap for any attention, constantly, and all she wanted to do was exist without having to fight for space. She’s a real loud problem child when she first comes to live with her pappas, but she slowly learns that this is a home with room enough for her. She starts to get quieter and smaller as she shrinks back to her intended size, and moomin is really worried about her, but snufkin assures him that she’s fine. Now her family mostly gives her affection verbally, and they wait for her to come to them for physical affection, which she’s starting to do more and more. On that note, when she gets older, she starts to get more and more irritated by interaction with her hair, compliments and brushing and braiding and all, until one day when she’s 14 she chops it all off, the whole red signal flame that she’s just got to tie into a bun and then she’s a mymble, a woman who has so many children she can’t love them all. She never grows it out again.

🌹 How easy is it for them to connect with others and make friends? On the flip side how easy is it for them to make an enemy of someone? Are they the kind of person who hangs around the food table at a party and never talks to anyone or are they the type who can talk to anyone?

Nellie and Oliver are both outcasts. She’s autistic and jew(ish?) and aroaceagender, he’s fat and trans and probably adhd. They met in kindergarten and stayed friends out of pure luck of finding someone like them (this is NOT unrealistic don’t @ me this is personal experience). Oliver wanted to connect but he just got so tired of everyone he became very abrasive to people he didn’t already like. Nellie just.. doesn’t care. She connects when she can but honestly she finds most human connection lacking. They’re the type to hang out back at a dance and goof off.

🔥 Give us a list of general likes and dislikes, such as colours, textures, music, weather and other stuff!

Nellie likes frogs and crunchy leaves and cold air on her face. she loves sweaters but she hates the wool texture, but she refuses to just wear oversized hoodies because she’s too pretentious. Her favorite color is actually purple (like plum) but she looks better in warm tones. She doesn’t really like blue and green, and she doesn’t like pastels. She doesn’t like sun because then it’s too warm for sweaters and it’s far too bright. Her favorite music is actually ragtime, but anything that’s not synth is pretty good in her book (she’s autistic and it grates her). She’s a goth in bright colors, really.

🍊 What is your OC’s favourite meal? Snack? Dessert? Drink? Any reasons behind this besides liking how it tastes?

I’m gonna share least favorite meal, because it’s funnier. Fillikin HATES fish. Despises it. Her mother hated it too and never fed it to her, and she never got used to it. it’s an essential travel staple especially when traveling with Snufkin but she just. cannot stomach it. When she first came to live with her pappas, back when they weren’t really her pappas but were these two queer men in the woods who took her in and she wanted to impress them she pretended she enjoyed fish. It wasn’t very convincing, and Snufkin mysteriously started having bad luck with fishing, often only managing a decent catch once a month. This went on for as long as was needed until she confessed that she didn’t like it. Her favorite food will always be her Moominpappa’s blueberry pancakes :-)

📙 What kind of subjects (of conversation, of discussion, in school or whatever) does your OC find interesting or engaging or that they can talk for hours about? What kind of stuff do they just find fun? What things bore your OC to tears and they couldn’t care less about? Why?

Nellie loooves history. She can talk for hours about it, and she does her best to research what REALLY happened. She knows huge swathes of the Dewey decimal system because the internet in her town sucks. This skill is just a neat little quirk based off of my own experience as a history nerd.

She hates English class, she’s smart and good at puzzles but she can’t figure out riddles and metaphors and anything with words. She’s story driven but language itself doesn’t come easily, at least not in a way that makes sense to other people, and she’s so frustrated and jealous of people who can write poetry and stuff.

😊 What can make your OC smile even when they’re feeling down? What cheers them up and makes everything feel better for them? Is your OC genrally a happy person and do they enjoy making others smile? What about your OC makes others happy?

Peter likes to get in his car and drive out of town, just drive and he’s alone in the car and on the road and the scenery changes. He’ll drive half an hour or so out, chill for a bit, and then drive back home. He likes the distance, it clears his head. He’s a somewhat high strung person despite being pretty hands-off. No one really comes to him for emotional support, but he’s pretty good at solving problems so people who know him come to him for that.

⭐ What is your OC afraid of? Any crippling phobias or some such? How do they act when scared and what helps them calm down? Does anyone ever find your OC scary? Why?

Nellie: watching it all disappear and she can’t stop it, it’s turning to ash in her hands and her loved ones are in danger and there’s nothing she can do. Being a bad person through inaction, letting awful people get away with awful things. Also being stalked or followed in the dark, she has a huge phobia of night monsters which is pretty reasonable when you consider where she lives. She carries around a big flashlight for this reason.

💛 In general, how in control of their emotions is your OC? Do they have a good hold on them or do their emotions control them, not the other way around? What do you think is the reason behind this and is your OC ever concerned about their lack of or good control?

Peter is remarkably good with his emotions for a teenaged boy. Unfortunately, he’s not very good with his emotions for someone who’s co-parenting a teen. Nellie and peter’s mother has her head in the cloud, and Peter’s been filling in for the gaps in her memory for as long as he could remember. He’s very good at compartmentalizing and repressing, but he’s got no clue how to actually deal with his emotions. He’s proud of himself for this and is willfully ignoring the inevitable breakdown when he leaves home.

🌳 Compare your OC to themself from 10 years ago. How has their mental state changed since then, how have they aged and grown up? Would they say they’re in a better place than they were back then or do they need help? What advice would they give their younger self? What advice would their younger self give to them now?

Nellie would tell her younger self to keep writing, even if out of spite. To not stop. To not listen to the people who tell her to stop, because she did stop and it was relief at the time but now she really, really regrets it. Now she’s past the point where she can write bad prose in confidence and practice without breaking down, and to her it’s too late to ever start. Her younger self would tell her that adults aren’t all bad, that they want to help you, that they don’t all hate you. She’d tell her that people are worth reaching out to. After all, she reached out to Oliver.

🍐 What is your OC’s mentality? Are they overall positive? Negative? A bit of both? Describe their thought patterns and reasoning behind their choice making!

She’s... passionate. Nellie believes in people being fundamentally human and having a great capacity for both good and evil, and she is always enraged when people turn to evil. Her mother may not have made her lunch every day, but she did impart some wisdom on her and Nellie’s gonna use it. She believes in compassion and friendship to a frankly naive degree, and is always torn when she has to fight a monster. Oliver is more cynical and bitter and jaded, since his parents aren’t forgetful but just very cold. Go to school and spar with your classmates for survival, go home and jostle with your siblings for survival, wrestle your parents for your rights, bump into a beast and fight it. It’s all the same. He thinks she’s being silly when she tries to befriend these abominations and he’s worried for her safety. She thinks he’s being cruel. This is their main source of tension.

💙 What did your OC want to be when they grew up and why? Did they have any lifelong dreams or ambitions they never got to work on or are they currently working to achieve this dream? Has their life taken a very unexpected turn and put all these plans on hold for a while or have they given up on any dreams?

Nellie always wanted to be a writer, she wanted to write historical fiction. She tried to keep this dream alive, she tried so hard, but relentless ableism from the public school whittled away at this tree until it fell with a whimper. She wants to be an engineer now. She’s good at math, it’s like a puzzle. A very boring puzzle. She‘ll get a job and pay the bills.

🌸 What does your OC’s voice sound like? Their laugh? Are they good at singing? Do they have an accent?

Oliver has a voice that’s like a mix of cavetown’s earlier work and Sidney gish. It’s a nice voice but he hates it so much. He snorts when he laughs and his voice is even higher when he sings. No one there really has an accent besides the backwoods slur (how about it sounds like howa bowdit, twenty rhymes with honey). Nellie’s voice is lower than his and she doesn’t even CARE. He hates every sound that comes out of his mouth but it’s not enough to stop him from talking, he has too many opinions for that.

💗 What would your OC say is their best feature? Why? What do their friends / family / lover(s) / people they know think is their best feature and why?

Fillikin likes her hair. It’s wild, it’s windswept, it’s tangled, it’s a mess. It drives her moominpappa insane but he can’t do anything about it because it’s her hair and she has the right to let it grow into an abomination instead of brushing it. It is the ultimate fuck you to her mother who was oh so attached to her only daughter’s hair. It gets so bad at one point that she gets her matt stuck to a tree while traveling and Snufkinpappa has to chop it off with his knife to get her free. The cut is messy and terrible and she’s DELIGHTED. She swears she’s gonna keep it so ugly and choppy forever but she forgets to cut it, and it gets long and matted until she gets stuck to something again.

Send me oc asks

[c-is-for-circinate]

It occurs to me that I promised y’all I’d tell you stories from the D&D campaign I’m running, and it’s now been a week since the first session, so I should definitely do some of that!  I can already tell it’s going to be a fun-as-shit campaign.  If nothing else, my party and I are collectively five variably-queer ladies who met at knitting group and range in age from “haven’t played D&D since 2e at GenCon in the 90′s” to “too young to remember fandom before AO3 existed”.  We’re real fucking cool.  I am going to have to explain, in detail, so many textiles and other interesting crafts.

I am a WORDY-ASS MOTHERFUCKER, so the whole tale will probably get pretty long in the telling, but: welcome to the continent of Nokomoris, on a world that probably has its own name but I haven’t decided on it yet because naming things is hard, dude.

[here’s where I will probably link game session posts in the future once they exist]

Hark, a backstory!  (And, our four players)

IF YOU RECOGNIZE THIS CAMPAIGN INFO BECAUSE YOU ARE PLAYING IT, CONSIDER YOURSELF UNDER DM ORDERS TO BACK OFF AND STOP READING.  I KNOW YOU FUCKERS ARE ON TUMBLR TOO, THERE IS A REASON I DIDN’T GIVE YOU MY HANDLE.  (I love you all very much and yes, there are spoilers in here.  Go away and text me now.)

Eastern Nokomoris, where our story takes place (or at least begins) is in a prosperous age of thriving city-states and collapsed kingdoms.  Most trade, culture, and even centralized government is based among the Nine Cities, massive metropolises located around the Attiks Sea and nearby lands.  Nearly a million people live in the nine cities, which are connected to each other via well-established sea and land trade routes, and also by what many are calling the most important technological/magical development of the modern age: a network of massive permanent teleportation circles, thirty feet in diameter.

The circle network is big enough to carry large trade wagons, livestock, huge parties of people, and even troops and war machines.  Sea and land trade has dropped by half between the Nine Cities in the past fifteen years, and continues to decline.  The cities themselves are thriving and prosperous, and it’s easier than ever to get beef and leather from Karna Vi, wool from Yefira, pottery from Celkan or metalwork from Tiers no matter where you live.

Outside of the cities, it’s another story.  Dozens of once-prosperous kingdoms, and even the whole of the Trava Empire, have fallen in the past seventy years: first during the Church Wars, and then in the yeas of chaos and rebuilding once the Wars were over.  Small towns everywhere that once paid taxes to a crown, and were protected in turn by royal troops and much-needed aid in times of hardship, have been left entirely to stand or fall on their own.  Some have thrived, becoming local centers of trade for whole coalitions of abandoned towns nearby.  Others have disappeared, died out, or simply faded into the wilderness, forgotten.  The great open plains of Highnorth where the Trava Empire once ruled, the endless golden sea of the Southgrass, the peaks and valleys of the Thavine Mountains, the deep many-colored forest of the Iris Peninsula--who knows what’s out there any more?

And in the Midlands, where the worst of the Church Wars took place...well, precious few towns even survived to rebuild in the first place.  Land that once held the most fertile farms in all Nokomoris is desolate now, scarred and cursed.  Most of the battlefield has been picked over by intrepid adventurers and out-of-work soldiers in the six decades since the Wars ended, already raided for magic and treasure.  The ruins remain, and the valleys where nothing will ever grow again, and the eternal shadow over the once-Holy City, and who knows what sorts of twisted things living in places people no longer go?

But it’s been sixty years since the Church Wars ended, and for most people, life is good.  Small-town farmers may no longer have the protection of any crown, but small technological advancements in plow design and crop rotation mean that they can produce more food than they need and sell the extra in the nearest city for coin.  More and more young people, freed from heavy labor on their parents’ farms, have learned reading, writing, history, and some amount of arcane talent.  The Grand Universities in the nine cities are thriving, full of scholars of all ages eager to learn and advance the course of knowledge everywhere.

Of course, there are ten times more scholars in the Grand Universities than there are professorships or other high-ranking positions to hire them to...and that is where our story begins.

.

Our intrepid party thus far includes:

Marion, a human paladin of indeterminate gender, whose human family stands among the nobles of the great city of Karna Vi, where our story begins.  Marion is an acolyte of the Church of Lost Things, which concerns itself with every god that does not easily fit within the purview of the other seven Churches, and also with every god that has been erased or forgotten by time (for all gods deserve worship, and all gods are capable of smiting those that neglect them, sooner or later).  They’re also a math major, largely because computer science hasn’t been invented yet.

Marion’s really hoping to be able to build and program a simple computing machine, a la Babbage’s Difference Engine (or Arthur C. Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God), to tabulate and generate all the possible names of every god ever to exist, which seems much more efficient than just combing piecemeal broken historical records trying to find them.  It has not been going well.  In a Church system where paladins are often more concerned with protecting people from the gods than for the gods, cracking this problem will let Marion figure out who the gods even are like nobody ever before.  But there are variables missing, and theomathematical constants they can’t even identify yet, let alone calculate--and they’re not going to find here.

Three interesting facts about Marion, as per their player: 

They once spent an entire week holed up in a lab over a holiday break and were declared missing-presumed-dead.  Police searches were involved.  It was a little bit of a scandal.

They are by far the most unremarkable and constantly forgotten member of their entire family.  (This perhaps says more about their family than about them.)

Everyone on campus is fairly sure they interfered with the campus clock tower specifically to give students more time on finals last semester.  This is false.  They were trying to run a different experiment entirely, messed with the clock tower by accident, and didn’t actually notice it was finals week even after it was over.

Kevin, an elf barbarian sportsball champion, hero of the university’s sportsball team for the past ten years straight.  Kevin is a foot and a half taller than any self-respecting elf ought to be, not to mention twice as broad.  He’s finally starting to acknowledge the fact that there is, in fact, no NFElf, and you can’t be a “professional sportsballer” within the Elven Ascendancy, and his bemused parents would really like him to do something with his life beyond playing those little games with the ball and all of those...non-elf people.

Kevin is also an art history student, mostly out of desire for an easy major that’ll make his parents happy while he happily spends most of his time out on the sportsball field.  He’s got high strength, basic middle intelligence, and negative wisdom.  He’s sat through more history classes than the entire rest of the party put together.  He understands approximately none of it.  Still--he can’t do sports forever, and art history makes his parents happy, and he might as well go on a quest to uncover lost art and artifacts and maybe prove he’s an actual adult sooner than later, right?

Three interesting facts about Kevin, as per his player:

Back in his home city playing little league sportsball, there were definite (and accurate) rumors about this wild elf that could and would straight-up squish opposing players.  That’s how the college recruiters found him in the first place.  It’s definitely why they wanted him.

He has so many groupies.  So many.  They come in so many different species and genders and Kevin is on board with every single one.  (On board?  On bed?  On convenient flat surface?  Does it particularly matter?  Not to Kevin!)

Kevin is covered in tattoos, and there are all sorts of rumors about what sort of eldritch magic they hold--like, that panther is probably a real panther bound by elven magic, right?  A pretty persistent rumor suggests that the tattoos all commemorate individual opposing team members he’s...either hospitalized or fucked, or both, literally nobody is sure.  (In point of fact, none of the above are true, and Kevin just has terrible taste in tattoos and a pretty stunning lack of both impulse control and supervision--but why quash the stories?)

Kou, a halfling bard whose girlfriend just left three weeks ago on a research expedition of her own, taking with her approximately 85% of Kou’s impulse control.  In theory, Kou is an alchemy major, studying science to make her scholar parents happy.  In practice, she probably spends more time sneaking into music seminars and/or busking on the street for spare change than actually doing alchemy, but her girlfriend was a Good Responsible Influence who made sure Kou didn’t get kicked out of the department, and to be fair, alchemy can blow things up sometimes so that’s always good.

Kou doesn’t so much have plans for the future as vague, contradictory aspirations, but that doesn’t mean she’s not smart.  She’s learned enough magic to use a set of recording stones to play, loop, and modulate beats or bits of music, thereby making her Nokomoris’s very first DJ, and she really wants to be a professional musician someday.  She just hasn’t figured out how to reconcile her dreams with her parents’ wishes, the lives they’ve worked so hard to create, or a halfling cultural legacy that has more to do with riding around snowfields covered in furs waving spears than it does with brightly-colored house parties.

Three interesting facts about Kou, as per her player:

Kou very definitely once spent a full day dressed up in halfling traditional garb, furs and all, including a very fuzzy fur hat.  It wasn’t until that evening that somebody saw the hat move and everyone realized she’d been wearing a curled-up live fox the whole time.

She once managed to create an incredibly destructive compound in alchemy lab out of ingredients that should not have actually been able to react that way.  She found out it was corrosive when she accidentally spilled it on six months’ worth of a different professor’s lab notes.  (She got an A anyway, because her lab professor hated the other guy, but that has more to do with Professors Ayanova and M’tiersi than Kou, really.)

She absolutely goes down to counter-protest every damn time those Family First assholes try to rally downtown in favor of child-producing (read: heterosexual, single-species) families.  Rumor says she once broke her guitar over a protester’s head, which horrifies her--Kou’s guitar is the most expensive thing she owns!  She used their own protest sign, like a sensible person.

Reigenleif, a mostly-female-probably gnome rogue known around campus as “Beer Run” for her skills at somehow always having access to better and cheaper beer than anyone else, and her general willingness to deliver to parties (for a small additional fee).  Reigenleif’s parents are small-time forgers who ended up mostly working for a local crime organization after a series of bad luck and political upheavals brought them to Karna Vi a few decades ago.  They really want their kids to go clean, avoid all the uncertainties and occasional jail sentences/executions that accompany a life of crime, and maybe make a little something of themselves.  Reigenleif, who has zero interest in staying on the right side of the law, mostly does odd jobs for a different, not-technically-rival criminal organization, and carefully does not tell her parents about it, ever.

Technically she’s an engineering major, and she’s more than got the brains for it, plus the accompanying curiosity about metallurgy and arcane artificing.  Still, she spends most of her time helpfully involving herself in other peoples’ projects rather than running her own.  (Her own projects have a lot more to do with figuring out new forging techniques and criminal tricks, and don’t look very good in the end-of-year department report.)  Enjoys causing trouble, not being in it.

Three interesting facts about Reigenleif, as per her player:

She absolutely owns a copy of the provost’s signet ring, which she can and has used to create documents allowing herself access to all sorts of University resources.  Like most things, she’ll share the use of it, quietly, for a price.  (She also owns a copy of Marion’s family signet ring, which is a much longer story that I as the DM do not know yet--can’t wait for that.)

Once captured and maneuvered a live swan into somebody’s office to cause as much chaos as possible so Reigenleif could get up to something somewhere else.  Is a little bit of a legend for it.

Aside from her not-actually-that-impressive family legacy of crime, Reigenleif’s spread a quiet rumor around school that she’s descended from the famous marauding pirate, Thrand Slender-Leg.  It’s possible that Thrand Slender-Leg never actually existed.  It’s possible that nobody had ever heard of him before Reigenleif made him up.  She’s certainly not telling.

[childoftimeandmagic]

The ones that end in 3 for the ask thing?

So I don’t know which of the many ask memes that this was for so I picked on that went to 100 and we’ll go from there. 

3. do you still talk to the first person you kissed?Answer: Like romantically? No, because he was an emotionally manipulative fuck boi and I don’t need that energy in my life. 

13. when did you last pet a dog? Answer: Uh....too long ago...probably on the 7th of February when I hugged the menace that is @indominusregina puppy. 

23. are you wearing shoes right now? Answer: Unfortunately 

33. who was the last person that called you cute? Answer: probably an upperclassman at the annual barrister ball at law school. Which to be fair I looked fly as fuck.  

43. what was your first profile picture? Answer: I want to say it was probably a sailor moon chibi. Let's be real I’ve been online longer than I should have. Actually, if we’re talking about Tumblr, my first avatar was a still from the little mermaid.  

53. do/did you like you math teacher? Answer: No.....I’m also 24 and haven’t taken a math class in a decade....

63. have you ever had an operation? Answer: I have in fact had 5. Two on my eyes, two on my spine and then my wisdom teeth. 

73. how many classes do you/did you take in high-school? Answer: uh....as many as I needed to graduate...it was kinda regimented on what I had to do....

83. do you have/are you the gay cousin? Answer: I’m the bi/heteroflexible cousin, I also have a gay cousin, a queer cousin, a lesbian cousin, and an NB cousin...so like.... my family is basically a rainbow pride flag

93. who did you last talk to on the phone? Answer: I called my summer internship placement to verify that they received my acceptance forms and ask if there was anything else they needed me to do. I last texted @indominusregina on the Tumblr App, and talked to my classmate on texting app. 

Ask me your thoughts 

[iheartchia]

CUPIDO IN PISCES AND MY EXPERIENCE WITH OLDER MEN – HOW DO THEY CONNECT?

Cupido in Pisces gives off a very sweet, sugary aura. They attract people who want to protect and nurture them. Cupido in pisces plus any happy-go-lucky placement can shape a sayori kinnie, or anyone who's innocently optimistic, cutesy and gentle.

my relationship with older men is a cause of trauma caused by the father. His death has taken a toll on my inner child since he died when I was a young girl. So,, my inner child naturally links or attatches herself to ; "old souls", mature people and older men with lots of wisdom to share.

Can you see the connection ? Yes! It looks like a father - daughter trope. Wow! You're a smart cookie. 💘

the shell of my heart – how do older men connect to this?

Well,, after my dad's death I had to mature a bit faster. I was pressured and molded into a "warrior – a brave child". This gave me a colder and more secluded exterior. It gave me walls as high as skyscrapers and a gaze colder than ice. This – reserved and overly-independent behavior caused a sponge effect,, where I soak up my own grief and tears. In silence.

My emotions weren't fully mature yet, since I was nine years old. Therefore,, the feeling of grief was extremely powerful and strong. I didn't know how to feel or what to do – where or when to cry, or why I was feeling as if an anvil was putted directly on my heart. Therefore,, I would have breakdowns very often in class.

Fortunately, or not so much, the teacher that I was with that year was a Male.

Ordinary male teacher, you know? Strict, Button up shirt in so many colors and normal work shoes. I can still remember how hard his chest was– since he would hug me whenever I cried. He had muscles alright. Not big but they were definitely there! And they were big and strong and very comfortable.

So the only person who could break off my walls with ease was my fourth grade teacher. And so it was for every other man who interacted with me. Even if they didn't interact with me at all or were fictional, they still had a chance to break the ice. Like,, my former math teacher, hairy arms, and veiny hands with golden bands on his fingers, a,, warm style – think Sweaters, turtlenecks and so on, a gentle face and a gentle attitude, crazy tall. Also my former geography teacher who liked to pat my head and ruffle my hair ( my dad used to do this so I was like instantly attatched ) and so on!

Can older women have the same effect?

I am queer,, so yes it is possible,, but,, it won't be as emotional or mental as it is with older men. So I don't think it would have the same effect, and if it did it would not be strong.

Remember that childhood trauma can affect the future of said child. Trauma can affect the relationships of the person with trauma. Think about your trauma and then look at the type of person you'd want to be in a relationship with – are they connected somehow?

[freedom-of-fanfic]

a comprehensive guide to mlm shipping habits in transformative fandom

anonymous said:

Ok, this is going to be a controversial one, but her me out: do you think it's a bit weird that so many women in the fandom (most of them straight or bi) only show interest in mlm ships? I know on a personal level everybody has their reasons and I don't think there's anything wrong with liking mlm in any sense, but for so many women to only relate to relationships where they aren't represented is a bit... weird. Not to mention knee-jerk reactions to any mlf pairing 🤔

This is far from a controversial question. People have been mystified that transformative fandom - primarily made up of women* - is ‘only’ interested in mlm for as long as transformative fandom has been a recognized phenomenon.

A caveat for the terminology in this post: as society at large tends to forget/ignore/reject the gender spectrum and transgender people, ‘male/men’ = characters referred to with male pronouns in canon and ‘female/women’ = characters referred to with female pronouns. (NB/agender/genderqueer people don’t come up, unfortunately.)

So first let me point out that transformative fandom is not only on AO3/tumblr. AO3 stats in particular give a very skewed idea of what fandom focuses on. Both ff.net and wattpad - fanfic archives which dwarf AO3 - have far higher ratios of m/f (to m/m) fic than mlm-focused AO3: ff.net is about 50/50 and has more genfic (no pairings) while wattpad features lots of m/f fic, often in the form of (male)character/(female)reader stories.

In other words, Fanworks are NOT mostly mlm; it’s just likely that we tend to notice m/m more than m/f because m/f is the ‘default’ - unmarked, and thus overlooked.

secondly, while you’ve lumped straight and bisexual women together in your ask, if you separate straight and bisexual fandom participants you get an interesting picture in regards to the typical ‘straight women are the biggest m/m fans’ common wisdom:

In a 2013 survey of AO3 users*, heterosexual female respondents were slightly less likely to be both readers and creators of M/M works - 87% were readers, compared to 90% overall, and 32-33% were creators, compared to 40% overall.

according to a variety of smaller, previous polls on various sites, the majority of m/m (and f/f) fans identify as queer (and based on a thorough dissertation pending, the stats are about 50/50 ‘mostly straight’/’mostly non-straight’).

Now with those caveats out of the way ... why is mlm popular in a space that is primarily dominated by women**? I honestly don’t think this can be truly quantified. the reasons vary from person to person too greatly. But there’s a lot of theories and a lot of anecdotal evidence for those theories. Here’s some of them, in no particular order:

it’s male privilege (sexism/misogyny). 

Male privilege: Male societal privilege and and bias feeds into media bias. media is heavily male-dominated (more male characters, usually played by cis men where actors are called for, with more central/leading roles and more screentime). Even conversations between female characters tend to focus on the male characters. The media bias then itself contributes back to societal bias - and fandom bias - towards seeing men/male characters as more interesting, more dynamic, and more varied than women/female characters.

Flip side: societal bias towards men leads directly to a relative lack of interest in women/female characters. they have less screentime, less interaction with one another, and are less centralized by the plot. Their stories are more likely to revolve around a male character in the cast. And when they do get the same treatment as male characters, audiences are very hard on them.

it’s simply a function of statistics. the overrepresentation of male characters compared to female characters has a natural consequence. If you do the math, that exponentially increases the odds of a mlm ship being fanned over compared to an m/f or wlw ship.

it’s also an observable phenomenon across multiple character demographics.

in addition to having more roles, relationships between masc characters are often where the emotional heart of a story lies. people tend to ping on that in and create fan content for it.

it’s because fanworks are a function of wish fulfillment, taking various forms:

straight women, being sexually attracted to men, consume mlm (nsfw) fanworks for the same reason straight men might consume wlw porn: double the eye candy. (the fact that straight women are actually less likely to consume or create mlm fanfic than non-straight women suggests this may not be as prevalent as often assumed.)

non-straight characters are still incredibly uncommon in mass media; transformative fandom, which is mostly non-straight, creates their own representation (perhaps with bias towards the characters with more emotional connection in canon.)

non-straight relationships are even less common than non-straight characters, and are unlikely to get much canon focus if they do exist. fandom fills this gap. (conversely, m/f pairings are far more likely to receive canon fulfillment and canon focus, so there’s less need to create fan content for it.)

(white cis) male bodies are both more common in (western) mass media and ‘unmarked’. like m/f pairings, white cis males are perceived as ‘default’ due to white/cis/male privilege. If racism, transphobia, and sexism weren’t enough on their own to increase content about pairings between characters of that description, that privilege also means that fictional characters of this description are the least likely to be seen as needing protection by policing elements in fandom, increasing the free rein on content creation. thus: fandom produces more mlm fanworks despite being fannish over m/f and f/f ships as well, which increases content obscurity, which increases free rein, which increases content creation, etc.

relatedly: women’s stories/sexuality is too fraught. male privilege/internalized misogyny leads directly to women’s stories and afab bodies being politicized.   some afab people have hangups about fictional representations of themselves in nsfw content, being uncomfortable with portrayals of people like themselves in fiction, and even sickened by depictions of pleasure experienced by bodies with vaginas (particularly in f/f works). mlm stories create enough distance for women to enjoy it without distraction by concerns of misogyny or fear of something hitting too close to home in the experience (and cis mlm nsfw content in particular provides a safe space for afab people who are bothered by depictions of afab pleasure for whatever reason). 

it’s an outlet for afab people discovering they are not straight or not cis. they may still identify as a ‘cishet woman’, but they are consuming mlm works because it resonates with a part of them that they haven’t consciously recognized.

In conclusion: at first glance it might seem weird that fandom seems to spend a lot of time on mlm, but this is both not entirely true and (where it is true) there are many, many reasons for it.

I’ve spent 8 hours compiling links and piecing together this post now so that you can have a comprehensive guide to the reasons that parts of fandom seem to be dominated by mlm stories, so I’m going to wrap up now. For more fanwork statistics, try these links:

AO3 Ship Stats Masterpost by @centrumlumina​

ToastyStats tag on @destinationtoast​

For more analysis on why mlm is popular (and wlw not so much), try these links:

Why is there so much slash on AO3?

Why mlm? (and some of the responses)

Femslash and Fandom

Femslash Can Save the World if We Let it

and this essay briefly sums up the migration of online transformative fandom over the last 15 years or so, giving context to AO3 fic stats.

One final note: the comparative prevalence of mlm to wlw would suggest that male privilege and bias is primary motivation for its popularity, but wlw was not always so scarce as it seems to be now. Just as you might expect, shows with a mostly-female cast had massive amounts of wlw content: sailor moon, utena, etc. But there’s reason to believe that purity culture has stifled wlw popularity, and that’s a damn shame.

*The largest fandom demographic survey from a reputable source (that I am aware of) was based on AO3 users, advertised primarily via Tumblr, and analyzed by @centrumlumina​ in 2013. I’m pulling my stats from this survey, but be aware it has significant limitations.

**in my personal experience, many of those in fandom who identify as women are cis women, but also many of those in fandom who do not identify as women are afab/were socialized as a woman before identifying differently. However, I don’t currently have survey data to back this up.

[aion-rsa]

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 17 Review: Burger Kings

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 17

The Simpsons Season 32 episode 17 ” Burger Kings,” continues to charbroil Springfield mythology into tasty nuggets of classic comedy. With so much grease built up over the years, the cooks are unafraid to refry old dishes as new cuisine. This season has seen quite a few instances where old storylines are transformed into surprisingly fresh installments.

In spite of all outward evidence, and the best testing indicates, Mr. Burns never gets old. Yes, he has made “The Top 100 Most Evil People Over 100” list more times than he cares to admit. But not in the comic sense. We’ve seen him do good many times, only to revert to the evil capitalistic monster which lies at his black, barely beating heart. Over the years, he’s rebuilt himself by plundering all ocean life, protected the town’s children from an anti-child group in order to keep ensure their supple young organs will be available when he needs them, and stole the winning glory from a championship bowling team.

Unlike Dick Cheney, Burns won’t live forever. So, when he turns a mouth-watering near-death experience into an animal-cruelty-free shot at redemption, long-time audiences are primed to see how it’s going to turn sour. The Simpsons consistently pushes the inner logic of each character to their most hilarious limits. Burns is an ancient being, who is also tremendously wealthy. This foreknowledge makes the idea he has all of the wrinkles from his one breakfast raison ironed out palatable. Wearing a live bat for a night eye patch works because he’s just evil.

Burns’ final request, as he lay on his deathbed, to have Smithers fire someone, preferably an employee who just bought a house, is perfectly reasonable. When Burns gets his epiphany about doing good, he says he knows how Edison felt when he invented the electric chair. His reference to a beloved airman is Rudolph Hess. We buy it as easily as we believe he lived past 100 without ever eating a hamburger. And this, we believe because we don’t doubt that Burns believes hamburgers are made of people from Hamburg.

Burns’ twisted line reading of “People don’t like me. They really don’t like me” is a nod to Sally Field’s memorable second Oscar acceptance speech. Burns is on the same level of public transformation, but he’s no flying nun. Though he can take some comfort in knowing there is a little extra radiation in every drop of water on the planet because of him. Burns does have a point when he disagrees with Smithers on how the townspeople hate him because he’s sic’d the hounds on each of them by pointing out everyone loves dogs. The writers twist his logic perfectly.

It isn’t even surprising how Burns, who made his fortune at a nuclear plant, only realizes what fission is during this episode. We should have some sympathy for Burns. We learn he’s always craved praise because it was something he never had as a child. Monty’s father died the same day he found out his mother doesn’t like fake art, like a crayon drawing he made of her hugging him. But the newspaper headline begins with “Finally some good news” when it announces Burns is near death.

Music has been very important this season, filling the gaps in almost every installment. This episode is bookended by a lounge singer, who also does double-time as a Greek Chorus, improvising the verses to match the inner conflict in both Homer and Burns. Homer learns more from dreams than can ever be taught in books. In the opening Burns learns people think of him as a fat cat no one really likes, and the singer serenades him with wishes he never fall asleep. One song teaches Homer he sold out all his values.  

Homer the perfect spokesperson as a stand-in for the common slob. Not only does he have it on his business card, but the card itself is stolen from Ned’s store with the name and number of his Leftorium crossed out. Lisa’s expertise in meat bypass products is as impressive as it should be. She’s been vegetarian since meeting Paul and Linda McCartney, and she’s intelligent enough to know her phony baloney from her ghost beef. It is a truly rousing moment when Burns wins the Simpson family over with a tasty meatless burger. The artistic rendition of Lisa’s tastebuds is inspired.

While it’s not explicitly stated, it looks like the Ex-cellent Burger stock movement brings out the compulsive gambler in Marge. It begins with a comment on the efficiency of Alexa voice commands. After Marge is misinterpreted into buying a thousand shares, Alexa tries to pawn herself off as Siri, but Marge is already hooked. The shareholders subplot, with the E-Trading and the “More money for Marge” stock ticker tongue, is as scary as it is funny because it is animated in Lisa’s childlike point of view.

The Burger Wars segment is ingenious, and benefits from the subtle seasoning. The medics arrive on the battlefield as Hamburger Helpers, and the mushroom clouds make for perfect burger toppings. One of the great mysteries of Springfield is how long “The Krusty the Clown” show has been on the air, when Krusty was made for cancel culture. When Burger King did an inclusionary ad promotion, Krustyburger rolled out the “Burger Queer.” The environmentally, and apparently humane food product Burns is selling inspires Krusty to introduce the LGBTQBLT. “My hero is a loser,” Bart notes sadly. Ultimately Krusty wins by doing exactly what he’s always done, nothing. He’s just waiting for someone to round up the donkeys before he gets back in the burger business.

The blatant social subversion of townspeople, including Fat Tony, holding up signs like “Blessed are the rich” and “We’ve got no beef with Monty” is brilliant subtle satire. The commentary continues as Burns finally gets to join the very exclusive “Beloved Billionaires Club.” It only has two members, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg gets left out in the shade. Not only is he not allowed into the club, The Simpsons takes on Facebook’s privacy issues in a scathingly funny way.

The episode is loaded with quick references to quickly disposable culture. In one scene, Homer is reading the book “Harry Potter and the Apologizing Author.” It looks like the Stranger Things kids get eaten by the alien they’re apparently trying to save. In the Burns’ food rendering plant, one of the workers kills the vegetation with the same implement of death used in No Country for Old Men (2007).

“Burger King” is also supersized with the quick passing tone comedy bits which make for classic Simpsons episodes. It is overloaded with comic shorts. We say goodbye to the “Sad News Reporter” as he streams away with the burst dam water so Kent Brockman can present sponsored news. As the French chef is running from the hounds he yells “cordon bleu.” During one fantasia, Homer sees himself as the daddy of a fly family who “has put all his kids through garbage.” Burns shoves the Krustyburger bag into Homer’s mouth to shut him up and take his burger.

The Simpsons even puts a spin on the comedy law of threes. When Mr. Smithers is worried that Burns has doubled his weight by eating hamburgers, we see Burns top the scale at 42 pounds. This is funny, and works as a punch line because of Burn’s known frailty, but when Smithers says “tripled,” it extends the joke, and the surrealism. It almost forces the audience to do math. Lisa’s climactic pursuit of Burns is classic series traditionalism. The slow-moving old man can’t get away from her on foot, and she beats him to his mansion when he tries to escape her in his ancient car. She even has enough time left over to tame his hounds.

Because of the NDA, Homer can only speak in pre-approved corporate phrases like “yes, ve gan,” “I guaran tree it,” and “abso-lettuce.” He’s only learned one lesson in his life, and that is not to bite the hand that feeds you, even if there’s delicious marrow inside. Homer’s generation did what it did, and he imparts timeless wisdom. Lisa’s future will have its own problems to face, like inventing new bees and learning to live peacefully with fire tornadoes. But she reasons, like the promotions promised, “The fate of the world is in your mouth.”

When Lisa wants to know whether she should tell Burns his company is only using endangered plants, Bart says “he already knows. He’s evil.” Lisa believes people do change for the better even though there’s no evidence to back it up. She wants Burns’ life of evil to be completely forgotten with one good deed. She even believes he will do the right thing when he learns the Amazon is the lungs the planet. 

Of course, Monty can’t keep it up. It’s what we expect, but The Simpsons still finds a way to twist it further. Once you’re known for doing something good you have to continue doing good things. “That’s why Jesus retired at 33,” Burns notes in an amazing realization. He’s no longer crushed by morality. Evil always wins, and he’s even planning on opening a school for the blind so he can convince them aliens have landed.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“Burger Kings” is the leanest fast food The Simpsons have served up in an already-satisfying season. With only one fat joke for texture, it is crammed with gags, jokes, sarcasm, and funny lines within funny lines. It crackles with cynicism and dashes dreams of little girls in mustaches asking hopeful questions. Even the opening couch gag offers an abstract appetizer to the story. The Simpson family are rendered as pre-French-fried potatoes. It’s only garnish, but it completes the meal.

The post The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 17 Review: Burger Kings appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3s9KWkr