#mostly telling this to myself

[science-lings]

The thing about having all your interests made fun of during your formative years is that even though it’s been a while since anyone actively did it, it’s still hard to be fully self indulgent even in your own mind because being cringe is bad and sometimes you so badly want to share things but it’s so easy for people to be mean about it. Anyway here’s permission from me personally to be as cringe and weird as you want to be, especially in your own head because it’s totally safe there and there is no god or mind readers who will give a shit about what’s going on in there.

[januscorner]

It’s fine to give up

If something is hurting you it is perfectly fine to stop doing it, it doesn’t mean you’re weak and it doesn’t mean you’re letting the other person win. Take care of yourself

[cathackz]

your gonna be a little weird and cringe and embarrassing sometimes and its ok. your still cool you just did a bit of a fucky

[inkskinned]

you have to be sexy but you have to be sexy in a way that's kind of bloody. you learn this early because you are wearing a ruffled skirt and the snow around your ankles kicks little sand particles against your calves. baby's first catcall. welcome to sexiness! welcome to the eyesore of your own body!

you have to be sexy like high heels. like sculpted eyebrows. like lean stomach and highly treated hair. you have to be sexy like youth is sexy, which means you have to be sexy like boxtox and plastic. a 30 year old can be sexy but she's not going to be bloody, and they like the bloodiness of it. a 30 year old is sexy when she is a whiskey glass and a wooden desk.

but you need to be sexy like an open mouth. you need to be sexy like a bitten apple. like plucked skin and white-knuckling the waxing kit.

so sex is a performance, not an enjoyment. for a while, you just assumed everyone else was also in on the joke - nobody actually likes sex that much, right? like, some men probably do, but why would you? it is like a gender - your gender is sexy. your gender is the performance of sex. you are thigh highs and garter belts. which, to be fair, do make you feel sexy.

part of what does make sex good is that you can tell that other people want you, which means the performance of sexiness is both bloody and wanted, which is good, which means you are winning at having a body. being wanted is the prize. being wanted is the thing you are searching for, not hope. you think you are looking for a soft grave in easy loam, but that is bloody but not sexy. to be sexy you must be bloody like a red open sign. bloody like a handprint. this will make you wanted.

any wanted or unwanted body is subject to supply and demand, which is to say that the more demand, the better you are valued. you must be highly demanded to be valued. this is stated in matter-of-fact by some men. sometimes it is a priest that says it, and sometimes it is a podcaster, and sometimes it is the 45th president of the united states of america.

(if you do not have any experience with being told your value, i want you to grab the nearest bird to you and i want you to crush it into a thin paste in your hand. spit into the center, and then hold your fingers closed tight around it for days and days, long after the rot has set in. feel bones itch inside of your fist. this is only a fraction of what it actually feels like, but it will suffice for a moment.)

good sex feels like you have earned their desperation. you have earned your own value. for a while you operated under the understanding that everyone knew about the power structure, even him. that their desire to take you - the violence of it - means that you must desire to be caught. little prince, guardian fox - you would rather have cut your own arm off. you liked the secret, cunning little voice you keep tucked into a box. you think you are fucking me. i am not even here right now. you are fucking what i conned you into perceiving. this is a painting, not a person. dominion over the body before all things.

so you bend your body like a wheat shaft and learn the steps so perfectly that it almost seems graceful. (if you do not have experience faking your own connection to your body and sexuality, cut each of your articles of clothing just a little bit incorrectly. pour fishbones into each of your meals. this way, you will experience the average noon on a tuesday.)

you have to be sexy like light spilled over a desk, but not desperate. not a noose. you can't be sexy like an electric guitar, you are the acoustic. you have to be on top of the bull but you can't have control over the animal.

okay, okay. the little rabbit of your heart went to sleep so long ago that winter has ravaged your concept of the human soul. there's something very-bad inside you, something that has taken over, a little fetid and rabid animal, angry and hurting and willing to bite first.

oh but even that's a pain that's sexy. open your mouth. be careful not to let the canines show.

[rimeswithpurple]

Carry On Countdown

Day 10: Dinner

I like to think that they never learn to sit at a table to eat.

Also, a little homage to @thewholelemon and @cutestkilla’s fic, Your Love Writ Across Your Face, with the jarred curry sauce.

Also on AO3!

[padmesbox]

Adam Page: international playboy

[thylacid]

havent finished the game yet but i like this tortured hamster

[stargloom]

im everything you hate

blood ver

[mewkwota]

I spent the afternoon studying Terry Bogard's face until my wrist hurt (it's because I was drawing so small, don't overdo it guys).

[tekablade-chronicles-3]

another Hulkenberg

[sweetgaleria]

Help a college student graduate by answering a survey!!

Hey!! Are you over 18 and in the miraculous fandom? Then this is for you!!

Hi everyone, this is my last semester of uni, and one of my final projects to be able to graduate is to write a scientific paper. I'm writing an article about adult fans of children's animation, specifically Miraculous Ladybug. My goal is to understand what makes adults (like us) want to join fandoms centered around shows aimed primarily at children, and to do that I'd love to hear directly from the source! The survey takes around 10 minutes to answer, it's 100% anonymous and it would help me immensely!

>>Click here for the survey<<

I need at least 30 people to answer, but honestly the more the merrier! I've also made a little thank you gif at the end, so if you see it let me know! If you have any questions feel free to send me an ask, as well!

Please reblog so it can reach more people! Thank you so much!

[skitskatdacat63]

Can we talk about how in all the 2011 Post-Qualifying pics, Jense and Seb are always gravitating towards each other, and then Mark/Lewis are just🧍‍♂️

[heyclickadee]

Massive fandom salt under the cut:

You know, if it were any other character besides Tech, if it was any other character in the exact same situation, I don’t think “he’s dead” would be the default conclusion. I really don’t.

And just to be clear, I’m not talking to people who related to or identified strongly with Tech. A lot of us feel like Star Wars kicked us in the face and we’re so used to autistic characters being disposable. I think Tech is alive*, sure, but I’m also sympathetic to the idea that hoping he might come back is just an ask too far—especially after the finale. I get it. We’ve got a reason to land at that conclusion.

The rest of the fandom, though?

I’ve seen people argue that Fives could be alive for years. Fives—a secondary character (yes, he’s a secondary character, I love him and yes he got his own arc in The Clone Wars because that show was an anthology and could take time to do that, but he was a secondary character) who got shot in the chest and breathed out his last on screen in Rex’s arms—is someone who comes up every time we go to a location clones could turn up. I’ve seen arguments that Mayday—who had an agonizing on screen death—could have been alive. People argue that Maul could come back. Ventress had a very unpopular on screen death and burial and DID come back. And I’m okay with that! I’d be cool with any of them coming back. But they all had far more definitive deaths than Tech did (Maul several times over).

So why

Exactly

Is the default position in the fandom

That the ONE main character

In the entire TBB show (in fact the only character in that show besides background stormtroopers) and most of Star Wars as a whole

Who supposedly dies off screen—remove everything else, take out the foreshadowing, take out every suspicious line, take out the total lack of confirmation and the lack of closure, remove ALL of that, we don’t even need to touch it all, let’s just look at the fall itself—in a long fall that we don’t see the end of because the camera cuts away while he’s still alive

Whose body neither we NOR THE PROTAGONISTS ever see

Is totally and irrevocably dead

In Star Wars?

You know, the franchise where Echo and Gregor both got blown up and were fine, and where Fennec got shot in the gut and then laid facedown in the sand and then in a bantha for hours, and was also fine? That Star Wars? The Star Wars franchise where people live just because? Why have we collectively decided that the rules of storytelling, let alone Star Wars, don’t apply to this one guy in particular?

And to be clear, I don’t think the default would be, “Oh he’s just alive and coming back in the next thing,” I think it would be, “He might be alive, he might be dead—we don’t know.”

But just—“he’s dead and always will be,” is such a wild conclusion for the fandom at large to come to about something this ambiguous.

*To be completely clear, when I say Tech is alive, I don’t mean he was supposed to come back and then got cut. I just think he’s alive, is still coming back, and was planned to do so.

[mimikyuno]

trans representation: my hopes and fears about mizuki5 🏳️‍⚧️

im writing this post so that i can keep a record of all of my current thoughts on the upcoming n25 event, which im fairly certain will come soon (september?). i just. i have a lot of thoughts on this topic and i wanna share them before the event drops.

disclaimer: i am tme, and while i am not cis, i am not transfem.

depiction of transfeminine characters in anime has been quite… how do i even put this into words. trans women are depicted as either a joke, or as an “otokonoko” which for brevity’s sake let’s translate to femboy (i highly recommend on reading on the history of the term though). the trope of “tr*ps” was quite common, and used for comedic effects. i think of ruka from steins;gate, who is clearly a trans woman; she has dysphoria, asks okabe to go back in time so she can be born biologically female etc. yet, her womanhood is never taken seriously. “she’s a dude after all.”

i have already written a small post about the history of the “otokonoko” label and the way trans women consistently get third gendered in the anime scene so i won’t repeat myself. the thing is, many transfem characters i have seen in anime are either uncracked eggs or, when out, are often not taken seriously by the rest of the cast. a lot of transfem characters i know of fall in between being an uncracked egg and being out; these would be the very many “girly boys” who identify as male, while living their lives as women and being happy about passing, while people around them who know about their agab either treat them as men or third-gender them. for example, kuranosuke from kuragehime stays an egg throughout the series. as i mentioned in a previous post, i see makoto from the currently airing senpai wa otokonoko as a closeted trans girl struggling with internalised transphobia. she has dysphoria, is happier and feels like her “real self” when presenting as a girl, displays gender euphoria when she passes, and more. narratively, she is coded as a girl. i havent read the manga, but i know the author drops the ball, and makoto never gets to come out in the series.

i can only think of a handful of trans women who are both out AND are taken seriously within the narrative. for example hana from tokyo godfathers, nao-chan from skip and loafer, or isabella from paradise kiss (iirc). though i have not watched these anime, i know that lily from zombieland saga, alluka from hxh, seiko from lovely complex and shuuichi from wandering son also tick both the “out of the closet” and “taken seriously” categories.

the situation is slightly different in manga. in manga, i have always found more trans representation (both transmasc and transfem). however, before we move on to mizuki, i really want to talk about one of my favourite mangas, namely “love me for who i am”, aka fukaboku (anime adaptation when ;-;). this manga revolves around mogumo, a non binary teen who is struggling to make friends. their classmate, a cis boy, mistakes mogumo for an otokonoko, and invites them to work at the crossdressing cafe that his sister (a trans woman) owns. mogumo is initially upset; they are not a girly boy, they are non binary. mogumo is reassured that the cafe is a place for people to be who they are, and they dont have to identify as an otokonoko to work there. this strikes a nerve with mei, one of the kids working there, who is a closeted trans girl. throughout the manga, these characters all come to be more and more unapologetically themselves. lgbt themes are addressed constantly (they even go to a pride parade!!) and the trans women depicted in this manga are some of the best written ones i have come across. because they are actually acknowledged as women.

the reason why i want to talk about fukaboku before discussing mizuki, is that the 4 kids who work at the cafe cover the spectrum of “crossdressing boys” we usually see in anime, though taking it a step further with mogumo and mei. firstly we have ten-chan. he mostly identifies as a boy. he likes anime and manga and cosplaying, he’s into girls (but also hinted to bi maybe? i need to reread this), and he’s an adorable weirdo. to him, dressing as a girl in the cafe is fun, clothes have no gender to him. then there is sou, who is gay and also identifies with his agab. sou has a boyfriend, and the cafe is the only place where he gets to gush about him and feel accepted. he likes cute clothes but always dresses masculinely outside the cafe. then there’s mogumo. as mentioned, mogumo is non binary. they like cute things, so they sometimes like feminine clothes like the maid uniform they wear at the cafe, but they actually prefer a cute androgynous style (they often wear shorts instead of skirts). lastly, mei (my fave, my daughter, light of my life). at the beginning of the manga, mei is a closeted trans girl. initially, she resents mogumo for rejecting the “girly boy” (otokonko) label that she thought she had to embrace to survive and be who she is. thanks to mogumo’s courage, and the guidance of two older trans women (one of which is the owner of the cafe and the other is her friend, who works in fashion), she finds a more stable sense of herself, and canonically and textually identifies as a girl.

AND NOW, onto mizuki. first things first, i see her as a trans girl. her struggle with her identity, the way she presents, her history of bullying, dysphoria (the covered mirrored), and depression (in middle school, before transitioning), visual metaphors (all the pink and blue symbols, i should make a post about this tbh) all hint at her being trans. i really dont think mizuki is an otokonoko; typically, in anime narrative, when there is an otokonoko, the fact is revealed early on, and the struggles are about being accepted as a boy who dresses like a girl or as a funny gag (tr*p). tbh, i think it wouldnt make sense for mizuki to be an otokono. if she were, her main struggle would be to accept that she wants to dress as a girl. once accepted, the arc should be resolved. and she wouldn’t be scared to say “hey im a boy” when people assume she’s a girl. especially with niigo? they met online when she was still pre-transition, if she was an otokonoko it would have made more sense if niigo thought she was a boy, and then irl saw that she looks like a girl and THAT would have been the obstacle. but that is not the case with mizuki. she is happy in people assuming she is a girl, and is terrified of being outed. that is not in line with the trope of otonoko. in fukaboku, we have two characters who are Actually “girly boys”, ten-chan and sou, and neither are like mizuki at all. they dont present femininely with their family nor at school. mizuki is way more similar to mei, when it comes to gender presentation and identity. characters who are similar to mizuki from other media and who dont identify as girls all share the same trait: they are commonly regarded as eggs.

my hope for mizuki5, is that she gets to come out as trans to ena and the rest of niigo. mizuki being confirmed trans, indirectly or not, would make the most narrative sense, looking at her story, imagery, and the build-up for the reveal. and while i desperately hope this is the case, i am overwhelmed by fear. times are changing in the anime scene, and we got canonically gay and trans characters in similar games (the lesbian couple in d4dj or the trans girl in enstars). however, project sekai is massive in japan, and quite renowned internationally too. and that comes with expectations and pressures. when gundam witch from mercury finished airing, bandai namco had to issue a statement that the relationship between miorine and suletta was “up to interpretation”, despite the fact that the two literally get married. gundam is also a huge franchise, and bandai namco chose to issue a statement that would give them plausible deniability. not only is project sekai huge, but as i previously mentioned, representation of transfeminine characters overwhelmingly labels them as an otokonoko. i think the label of “otokonoko” is very useful when it comes to plausible deniability in media; u can see this character as a closeted trans girl, or as a crossdressing boy. you pleased the transgenders, and you pleased the transphobes. expect, u didnt please us. im gonna say it, i hate the crossdressing boy trope in animanga. in most instances, it’s a way to deny the character their identity, and in others, it’s treated as a means (willingly or not) to perpetrate violent and harmful transmisogynistic jokes and stereotypes. tho i will admit, i love a lot of “otokonoko” characters, tho for my mental health i tend to view as transfem nb or just trans women.

project sekai, with the massive reach it has, has the opportunity to give its audience a canonically transfem character. a character who is a fan favorite, whose story has, so far, been handled with so much love, kindness and understanding. mizuki could become the new standard, she could change the way transfem characters are portrayed in mainstream animanga for real. i know we have to let go of the expectations that queer characters have to verbally and explicitly state their identity for them to be taken seriously by the audience but fr i hope this will be the case for this event. i dont think most people would get it otherwise, and will just keep seeing mizuki as an otokonoko. which is in itself sad; being cishet is such a default, that gay and/or characters who never explicitly come out are either misunderstood or seen as a sign of “queerbaiting” (dont get me started on yuribaiting and how insane some of y’all are calling a show with gay women “yuribait” if they dont kiss or say “I AM A HOMOSEXUAL WOMAN).

mizuki’s and ena’s VAs told us to please be kind and understand the characters in preparation for the upcoming event. i hope they go for it. i really, really do. this could for real be a huge game changer in the industry. i see how project sekai keeps inspiring other shows and games (i should make a post about this too lol), so i hope mizuki won’t be third gendered, or shoved into the otokonoko label. i hope she gets to be herself. a girl. and be accepted as one by ena and the rest of niigo. it could be huge. or it could be a flop. no in between. which is why im both excited and terrified of this event. SEGA pls-

[jasontoddiefor]

webcomic rec of the day:

Kill the Villainess

Plot: I reincarnated in a novel inside the body of a villainess named Elise who poisoned herself when her fiancé, the prince, married her childhood friend, the maid Helena. From the moment I realized this, I had only one goal. Escape from the world in this novel. To succeed, however, I must play the part of "Elise" and die her foretold death, even as the events of the novel start to change.

Comment: Oh, man. I've heard many good things of this webcomic to the point where I was annoyed and refused to read it out of spite. However, one day spite was not enough to keep me away and I gave it a try and now I have to admit, yes, it more than deserves its praise.

In a genre full of villainesses turning out to be good guys, getting the man and the happy ending in their new world, this story breaks convention. It doesn't just linger on the passing trauma of transmigrating into a new world, it makes it the core theme. On top of that, without spoiling too much, this story never loses sight of its start. Too often these stories get caught up in adding yet another villain and conspiracy, shifting the goals ever so slightly, but Kill the Villainess says this is a story about death and holds to its promise. This, of course, doesn't mean there isn't a happy ending.

Also, I'd die for Anakin and not just because he's called Anakin. In a world of golden haired red eyes Male Leads, he's a knight in shining armor.

[captainswan618]

Looking for my Rose 🌹

(And yes, the pin I'm wearing says "gay for Rose Tyler". I made it for myself, but then I realized it definitely also applies to the Doctor lmao)