#operation: give queer characters queer community

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

My final Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day package has been delivered! Ten Prides in Portland by Leiascully and Simple Machines by coffeesuperhero continue the Leverage OT3 theme I've got going on this year. The fic aren't necessarily a series, but are thematically connected, and also the authors are married to each other. (It happens! My wife and I met writing Due South and Hard Core Logo fanfic lo these many years ago!)

There are some similar things I adore about both these fics. I love the sort of playing with structure in both of them, and watching the characters evolve, and also, seeing the queer community in all of its heartfelt messy occasionally infuriating glory. I also adore the thoughtful Eliot character exploration.

First off, Ten Prides in Portland! What it says on the tin. Ten years post-series at a certain brewpub in Portland, as Elliott finds queer community and figures himself out. This book is the reason I now have rainbow ribbon for bookmarks. As you can see, I went so very literal with this one. Homemade book cloth, acrylic paint, and cardstock endpapers printed with a map of Portland.

I had way too much fun with the layout on this one! It was an easy theme to lean into.

Eliot navigates a relationship with two people he loves, runs a restaurant, and figures himself out. I love the character dynamics, the cast of queer characters, and the way the second fic in the series is structured around brewpub menu items. The titles are from the iconic Mary Oliver poem Wild Geese, which is where the bird theme comes from. I used a really lovely fancy liquid mirror silver paint for the geese on the cover, which is gorgeous in person but hard to photograph.

More geese! Some menu formatting! Also, a food-themed illustration at the beginning of each chapter to match the menu item. (Thank you, stock images on The Noun Project.) This was another fun one to play with.

Not pictured here for either book: the insurmountable printer issue I was having where any page with an illustration turned out extra-dark, and the flip side was correspondingly lighter. BUT. I'm still pretty pleased with how they both turned out, happy to have both of these on my shelf, and even happier to send them off in a set together to the authors' hands.

Happy slightly belated FFWAD, Leiascully and Coffeesuperhero!

[mysterycitrus]

What was so horrendous about the Dick Grayson cop storyline? Is it just that it happened?

there are two foundational issues with officer dick grayson as a concept — the first is that dick grayson being a cop is a bad character choice, and the second is that chuck dixon unfortunately exists.

the latter is obvious — every single thing dixon touched in the nineties reflects his own turbo fascist politics. he’s so misogynistic he wrote both iconic queer men (connor hawke and tim drake) and devastatingly toxic yuri (babs and dinah) entirely by accident and has been angry about it ever since. thusly, dick being a cop wasn’t about dick himself, it was another explicit example of dixon’s belief that it isn’t the system that’s flawed, it’s simply flawed people in positions of power. it affirms his thin blue line, borderline authoritarian ideal of what society should be.

it’s a shame, because i think nightwing’s strength as a series is one with a large civilian supporting cast, and having dick opposing a corrupt commissioner is a good way of exploring that. think about amy and gannon and clancy — all interesting characters that help flesh out bludhaven as a city, making it stand out against gotham.

otherwise, u cannot convince me dick grayson would ever want or even consider being a cop. “dismantling the force from the inside” is not a practical, long term solution to corruption, and because dick isn’t an idiot he would know that. dick being a cop means he’s placidly involved in the crimes the bcpd commits, no matter how strongly he opposes them. additionally, the character beats are kinda boring — there’s only so much of dick pretending not to know too much and people being amazed by him that i can tolerate. that’s even ignoring that i don’t think he would, realistically, view the police force as a necessary good. consider his background, consider that unlike bruce he wasn’t born into wealth and power, consider that dick has always operated very low on the street level, within a community. he should not like cops.

ideally, if we wanted to rehash this plot, it could be fun for dick to do something like be an independent reporter instead of a recruit. it’d be a cute homage to clark, it’d give him an excuse to hang around a crime scene, and he could practise actual detective work and build trust with the people in his community. let him punch a cop!!!

[bengiyo]

Be My Favorite: The Evils of Queer Surveillance

I’ve had a chance to calm down a bit, but I need to get this off my soul immediately. Kawi’s mom is engaged in a set of extremely vile and evil acts that we unfortunately have a long history with. In revealing Pisaeng’s relationship with his mother today, this show forces us to reconsider what we know of Pisaeng’s history, and forces us to question the presumptions of safety in our own communities.

Before we get into this, I will be describing her actions as evil. I do not want to contribute to a limited view of the character as inherently evil. I believe this woman is doing what she thinks is best for herself and her son. It’s important that we not fall into fundamentalist reads based in predeterministic assumptions about people’s behaviors. She is engaged in acts that are reprehensible. She likely believes she’s doing them for good reasons, and may have accepted the balance of harm and good on her own.

Normally I would take screenshots and borrow gifs to break up a post like this to make it more digestible, but I’m too upset to take all of that time. I’ll leave the writing about Pisaeng’s personal journey and the romance writing to others this week.

She Manipulated Her Son into the Closet

Pisaeng’s mother uses her positive positioning with her queer employees and lip service to queer issues to appear as an ally. She used that goodwill to convince her son that it would be best for his own reputation to be quiet about his sexuality and to keep her informed about any moves he made in that regard. Pisaeng has already seen through this, but it wasn’t until Kawi confronted him with the reality that he was hiding himself that he felt the need to push himself out more.

This is now the third time Gawin has played a character like this. All of Gawin’s genre characters know who they are and are choosing not to be out because of the inconvenience that others’ perceptions of them bring. It is absolutely heartbreaking to me that Pisaeng was not discovering his queerness in his attraction to Kawi. He was rejecting his closeted programming because of his friendship with Kawi.

It makes me so sad that Pisaeng seems tired and uncomfortable around his mother. He knows the way she operates. She colors right inside of the lines with every action she takes. He gives her a knowing look as she asks seemingly-innocent questions of Kawi. She gives a knowing look when he redirects Kawi into finishing his breakfast. She plays offended when she insinuates that he violated their agreement of being out without informing her.

I hate everything about this, and it only gets worse because she’s weaponized his own community against him.

She is Using Queer People to Spy on Her Son

Some of you may not know about The Lavender Scare or have a strong grasp on the history of law enforcement using members of a community to spy on their own people, but it’s literally how they planned the operation to assassinate Fred Hampton and other leaders. Gay communities were vulnerable to infiltration because when cops threatened enforcement of sodomy laws on white men, they turned on their own communities to avoid losing access to the privileges of whiteness. I say this plainly to show that these tactics are easily transferrable to any marginalized group when its members are isolated.

Pisaeng’s mother reminds Pisaeng that his private life does not belong to him, and that she has already turned his own community against him. She commands extraordinary wealth, which she has leveraged on her queer employees to report when her son is spotted in queer places. She seemed surprised that she was not aware of Kawi, and implies by the comment on his “unique name” that she will absolutely know who he is shortly. Pisaeng feels the threat of all of this, and steers Kawi out of there, but it’s made abundantly clear that he is not safe in queer spaces. Worse, his presence in queer spaces brings the surveillance of the ruling class down upon them immediately. In so many ways she’s made him a threat to his own community.

What’s especially sad about this is that his mother becomes an immediate wedge between Max and Pisaeng. She signals in public in ways that engender support of the queer community. Pisaeng has clearly grown to like Max, and seems to want to build a friendship with him. However, even a queer as apparently-put-together as Max can be fooled by his mom. Pisaeng doesn’t seem mad or disappointed about this; he seems resigned.

Where the Hell Do We Go from Here?

I have no idea. GMMTV went here a little bit with Not Me, and in a different direction with The Eclipse, but I wasn’t expecting them to come for queer-friendly-signaling members of the wealth class. I think they’re walking a careful line by highlighting her political ambitions but not making her a politician already. The insidiousness of the control scheme his mom has deployed against him is legitimately horrifying to me, because she crushed the spirit of her queer son right as he blossomed. I also lived in the closet, but I crushed my own spirit for them.

I know this is a BL, so we’re going to be caught up in the romance and whether or now we like Krist and Gawin together, but please don’t forget about the queerness underpinning these kinds of stories. It is abjectly evil to weaponize members of a community against each other. What is being done to Kawi and the people around him is evil. This cannot stand. She must be stopped.

[laurenfoxmakesthings]

I've been holding this news to my chest for quite a while…I've been interviewed about my book and the spin-off series based on The Man From C.A.M.P. I've been developing, Agents of C.A.M.P.

The first book will have ace and aro non-binary protagonists!

I'll admit, not everything from the interview could make it in, and understandably so. The article goes into more of the history than I originally thought, it goes into the foundation and Maggie Weadick, which I always knew (at first just Maggie was going to be interviewed).

The Agents of C.A.M.P. series in this article was essentially a damn good third act and an announcement. There was no way all of my autistic-motivated info-dumping and gushing was going to fit, I knew that.

Like, the fact that it took years of re-reading some of the books on-and-off as a fan before it became a hyperfixation out of necessity for the spin-off. Or how all that research thanks to those libraries was to piece together the unofficial final out-of-print novel of the original series. Or how 'The Golden Doppelbangers' title is also inspired by the Dr Goldfoot films (for good reason *wink*)

However, here, and here only, I was add a few things that I'm eager to share now that this project is more public. Supplementary material. Extra goodies for the people interested, let's say.

Firstly, the other protagonist. I'm happy Quant is introduced to a lot of people in this article, especially considering how fulfilling it has been to write the flamboyant, confident asexual character I always wanted to see (I've noticed allos can't really imagine ace characters being anything except demure, reserved, and deadpanned, and I'm tired of that). But Quant is one protagonist out of two, and not even the novel's main POV protagonist.

The other protagonist is Sypretes Arsénios. An aromantic, genderfluid lesbian, archer, and art thief. Their whole deal is they've been on a years-long quest to recover queer art looted by Nazis. But now that quest is finished. They can't return to their old life and they can't bring themself to giving up their current one, at best now stealing queer art to make a statement. And that's where Quant comes in, recruiting Sypretes as their new partner in C.A.M.P.

They're your eyes, being introduced to C.A.M.P. in the modern day, and asking the questions that need to be asked.

The first thought I had about this novel was that the protagonists had to be an ace and an aro. As an ace myself, I know how tiresome it is to be the afterthought in the queer community. This will not be the case here, aces and aros are in the first book and more will come.

And I wanted ensure aroallos, queer folks we hardly ever see in stories, gets represented with Sypretes. Due to this amatonormative world seeing aroallos as cold 'at best' and predatory at worst, plenty of creators seem uncomfortable to even try to represent them. As though sex isn't 'exploitative' if there's a potential for romance. That rhetoric is much more conservative than people think, so I say screw that. In this novel, platonic relationships are worth more than gold, whether sex is involved or not.

I probably already hinted at this on tumblr, but this novel is about sexbots. One reason I did this is because aces and aros are often compared to robots, and I wanted to show how untrue that is. Especially with Sypretes and how much of a caring lover they are.

Secondly, I want to talk about C.A.M.P. itself. I definitely get why even other queer folks might give the side-eye to novels starring queer secret agents. The reason why a lot of us don't trust the series Q-Force (and I agree). A lot of us know real government agencies in charge of espionage have screwed over marginalised groups, including the LGBTIQA+ community. COINTELPRO. Operation Condor. The Lavender Scare. And many, many more atrocities. It doesn't make any of it better if the government agent is queer.

Here's the thing. I wouldn't have been interested in the original series at all if the series' protagonist Jackie Holmes was 'a CIA agent but gay'. C.A.M.P. isn't a government organisation. Since the original series in the 1960s, C.A.M.P. has been a secret underground independent organisation dedicated to advancing and protecting the LGBTIQA+ community, through many different branches.

Each branch focused on a different subject matter through a queer lens. One of which is the 'special services' branch, essentially the secret agents/detectives. I won't give everything they do away, but in short, when there's a hate group threatening the community, it's the agents' job to punch them and stop them.

Agents of C.A.M.P. will have more in common with Leverage than James Bond. Even the original Man From C.A.M.P. series was more inspired by James Bond's aesthetic than the franchise's authoritarian ethos.

Now, the original series wasn't perfect, for instance some of Jackie Holmes' missions/novels didn't involve the point of C.A.M.P. because of elements that haven't aged well. I've been intent on dealing with the original series' problems thanks to researching the lore (I know a lot of people hate that word now, but it's what I got). While also making sure both the series and the in-universe organisation are much more intersectional and much more focused on fighting fascists.

Thirdly, I'll admit, I'm a slow writer. It doesn't help that my book has ballooned bigger than I intended (as apparently any creative project I do does) and the plot is now too tight to break and cut. I'm nowhere near the end of the first draft yet, though I've been finding more ways to write more often as possible.

My point is if my novel's release date (there isn't one yet) gets delayed, maybe delayed more than once: please don't blame the Victor J Banis Family Foundation or speculate the worst case scenario. It would be me being slow and too thorough for my own good.

I don't want to end on that note though. Now that this project is way more public, I would be more than happy to answer any questions about Agents of C.A.M.P., my novel 'The Golden Doppelgangers', maybe even the original Man From C.A.M.P. series, or anything else relevant.

[tloupride]

TLOU Queer Fic Recs

Happy Pride! Admin Zoo here, with some of my favourite queer fics, please share your own recs, I'm looking for more to read!

🏳️‍🌈 🩷💜💙 🖤🩶🤍💜 🏳️‍⚧️

Late October, 2022 (Or The Last Time Joel Saw Bill and Frank alive), 5k, T, by Springandastorm, @spr1ngandastorm

Joel and Tess and Bill and Frank hang out and find community in each other. This devastated me in the best way, I have not stopped thinking about it since I read it. Beautiful and bittersweet and hopeful all in one.

trace my fingers across your frozen veneer, 2k, E, by fromthewhales @deervsheadlights

Bi Joel gets pegged by Tess, as he deserves. Like all the best explicit fics, this is a character study and really gets into their relationship. 10/10 no notes.

some sort of private conversation, 2k, M, by fromthewhales. @deervsheadlights

Bi Joel tries to have a hookup on the road but Ellie cannot mind her own business. So in character and hilarious, RIP Joel hope the next time works out better for you.

Eternal Love Bullshit, 3k, T, by @sedumlineare

STOP THE PRESS, ASEXUAL JOEL IS ON THE SCENE. Lovely fic where he bumps into an old friend in Jackson (who's a lesbian!), remembers past community, and it's just so sweet. Neare aced this one.

The Trans Joel Universe, series, 27K, G/T, by @sedumlineare

NEARE THIS GIVES ME LIFE. This series has everything: gender euphoria and mentorship, trans Joel through the years, and nonbinary Ellie! Stunning, lovely, special mention to Took a While But I Don't Mind (How Do I Look Now?) which is full of joy and is named after one of my favourite songs

I know, I know the sirens sound/Just before the walls come down, 2k, M, by @donttouchtheneednoggle

Trans Bill AND Frank!!! Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus. This fic left me in a puddle on the floor. Beautiful, stunning, please read it, it's gorgeous.

making yourself up as you go along, 6k, M, by awenswords, @awens-words

Trans Joel!! Really brilliant fic, I especially love the detail given to his smuggling operation and how that doubles up as a way to get hormones. Him trying to come out to Ellie is a particular highlight.

Different Shades, 773, G, by mandocule, @theydjarin

Ellie asks about Bill and Frank, and she and Joel come out. Really sweet little fic with lesbian Ellie and bi Joel doing their best to be #Vulnerable. One of the first queer TLOU fics I read last year!

mellow is the man who knows what he's been missing, 15k, G, by flannelfeelings, @boopernatural

The happy AU where Joel gets to meet JJ and Ellie, Dina, and Jesse have a polyamorous relationship! We love love, we love community.

Watch Me Bleed, series, 24k, M/E, by Fiachra, @consultingzoologist

Apologies for the self-promo, but writing this changed my life due to the people I met as a result. TLOU but Joel is trans, with an Ellie-centric sequel exploring her queer feelings, and a t4t TessJoel installment (that gets the E rating)

[mierolainen]

Hi! I was considering running Eberron Express for some friends, and I was curious how your DM homebrewed things and/or what was improved - would you be willing to share?

I asked my DM to pitch in with her thoughts, since it was her campaign, so I'll put her response (and mine) under a cut!

--

" I didn't do much technical fiddling really, I dropped the characters from level 6 to 3 the second time I ran the game to keep things simpler for the players and myself. There's a lot to keep track of even without having wizard NPCs running around with 6274 different spells :D Otherwise I just went through the setting and the characters with a fine-tooth comb, adding and removing things to make something I found interesting and easy to understand even without prior knowledge of the Eberron setting.

Some practical things you may want to prepare: Mark on the train map who sleeps in which cabin, that hasn't been done in the original material. It's also a good idea to prepare an exact timeline of who did what and when on the night of the murder, this can be something your players start asking about during the investigation. Also think about who inherits the victim's wealth, maybe his will could be found on the train if you'd like?

My personal favorite part of preparing the game was feeding the players misleading information about the NPCs connected to their characters and then giving them personal revelations during the game. Someone they trusted betrayed them or someone they thought of as an enemy was operating under whole different motivations than they thought, that sort of thing. Make the game your own and have fun!!

(Oh, and ban the Prestidigitation cantrip! You don't want your players magically cleaning up evidence!) "

--

My only addition to this would be to communicate with your players and find out what kind of a story they're most interested in experiencing! What worked for me (interpersonal drama, rampant queerness, giving player characters space to express their emotions) might not work for you. At the end of the day, the only people you need to impress and/or entertain at the table are you and your players! :>

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello! I read through the Wicked Ones rpg and really enjoyed it. Do you have any recommendations for games where you play as the bad guys? Preferably larger books.

THEME: Bad Guys

Hello friend! From monsters to villains to just plain ol’ bad dudes, let’s see what we got. I tried to stay away from one-page RPGs, but I can’t guarantee how long some of these books will be.

SLA Industries, 2nd Edition, by Nightfall Games.

In the World of Progress, the corporation SLA Industries rules all. Employing Operatives to enforce, extend and maintain their power base, SLA controls a multitude of worlds - industrial, franchise and resource - with planet Mort at its core. As Operatives execute the company’s will, new threats emerge through the cracks of the city walls, turning Downtown into a battleground.

You, the SLA Operative, are fighting for fame and fortune against a backdrop of a crumbling reality. Operatives feed the always-on televisions with a gaudy media of wall-to-wall death and dismemberment. Operative life is all about climbing the corporate ladder and earning sponsorship deals and notoriety along the way.

In SLA Industries, you’re not exactly villains, but you’re not good people either. You work for an evil corporation, in a world of evil corporations, and you’re extending their reach for a chance to climb the corporate ladder. SLA Industries is reminiscent of trad games in terms of its complexity; character creation consists of spending points to improve abilities, and you can improve some of your character abilities by introducing flaws in other areas. Because of the roots in its game design, I’d expect a longer book to read through here.

If you want to learn more about this game, you can check out the game review for it on Cannibal Halfling Games!

Seven Deadly Sirens, by Litza Bronwyn.

In this game, you play one of seven types of mermaids and roll with seven deadly sins to power your basic and special moves in order to summon ships, lure men to you, devour their hearts, and collect their treasures. Fun, flirty, indulgent, and a little chaotic, this game is perfect for a night of raucous debauchery or an afternoon of silly adventuring.

This game is definitely on the shorter side, but I really really like the idea of using seven deadly sins as your source of power. This game is Powered by the Apocalypse, so expect something interesting to happen even with every dice roll. Unlike common PbtA games, you pick from a communal list of moves to define your character, rather than picking a playbook. The core loop of this game will involve luring men off of boats, killing them and raiding the boats for treasure.

Here, there be Monsters! By Wendi Yu.

here, there, be monsters! is a rules-lite response to monster-hunting media from the monsters' point of view. It's both a love letter and a middle finger to stuff like Hellboy (and the BPRD), the SCP Foundation, the Men in Black, the World of Darkness games and the Urban Fantasy genre in general. It is an explicitly queer, antifascist and anti-capitalist game about the monstrous and the weird, in any flavor you want, not as something to be feared, but to be cherished and protected.

Play as a diverse crew of monstrous, anomalous or just generally odd beings, fighting against those who would use, abuse or even annihilate you. Create and populate your own supernatural underworld, abnormal gang and extra-dimensional haven. Hunt monster hunters! Punch nazi occultists! Eat the rich! Protect each other! Fight back! Here, there, be monsters!

This is 164 pages of monstrous fun, in which your characters are likely treated like bad guys by the society around them, even if they’re not really villainous themselves. It gives you a chance to revel in your monstrosity, with 100 pre-made character backgrounds for you to peruse. One content warning: there is quite a bit of art revolving about bodies, in various forms (this is a monster game, after all). This isn’t meant to detract from the work - in fact, it perfectly communicates the tone of the game - but it is something you should be aware of before you buy.

Blood and Sacrilege, by Tom Clark.

In a Dark Fantasy setting based on the Early Middle Ages of England (The Dark Ages), you play as a brood of vampires bent on toppling the humans’ reign over Brackenstow. Here you'll find a country ruled by mortals, with vampires lurking in the shadows of society. It wasn’t always this way though; vampires founded Brackenstow and after a hard fought war, lost it to the mortals they once enslaved. 

Nearly a century after the vampires were defeated, legal rights to the kingdom are still squabbled over by the country's self-proclaimed leaders while bishops and ministers fight for their own influential positions. The vampire threat looms on the horizon… But the power vacuum left by a leaderless kingdom has taken it's toll on the stability of the land, leading to civil unrest and the more immediate danger of war. 

Now, with humans on the brink of societal collapse, the vampires peer out from the dark, and the broods that have laid in wait for so many decades start to execute their long-laid plans.

This looks like a game still in the works, but it sure looks promising. As long-defeated creatures of the night, you see a chance to take back a kingdom you once owned. Forged in the Dark games are all about projects that the group has to work consistently at in order to succeed, so expect plenty to read, especially if it’s inside such an established setting.

Villainous Fucks, by Keganexe (@keganexe)

Villainous Fucks is a tabletop roleplaying game designed for 2-6 players, about doing petty crimes as The League of Villainous Fucks, and ruining the day of Superheroes and Cops alike (and truly what's the difference). Villainous Fucks runs on Spencer Campbells incredible LUMEN System, and is inspired by the best Villains across media. LUMEN is designed for quick, tactical combat, and Villainous Fucks dials it up to 11 for the best in zany comic book style action.

If you are interested in ruining the day of do-gooders in over-the-top comic book action, and if you like your combat to be satisfying and punchy, you want Villainous Fucks. Instead of skills, LUMEN uses approaches: how your character does something is more important than what exactly they do. Is your villain Brutal, Cunning or Quick? My favourite little tidbit from Villainous Fucks is the characters’ stance on Cops. Villains believe that All Cops are Bastards, and All Superheroes are Cops. If you like revelling in doing crimes, then this is absolutely worth checking out.

Games I’ve Recommended Before

Monsterhearts 2, by Avery Alder. (Teenagers with great monstrous potential)

Spire: The City Must Fall, by Rowan Rook & Decard. (You’re sympathetic terrorists, but you’re still terrorists.)

This former request that asked about playing mind flayers and similar monsters.

[mr-magoriums-im-sorry-emporium]

yo hi your shawn spencer having aspd take is awesome, been looking for a 'popular' character that displays aspd better than dexter. if you ever wanna give more elaboration / possibly infodumping i will be in the audience standing and clapping

u sly dog u got my monolouging.... AIGHT HERE GOES!!

so i forgottt if i said so in the og post but i think henry ALSO has aspd and thats where shawn got it from, but to elaborate: i think that's why henry became a cop

FIRST OFF: wrt cops, i am operating on TV SHOW LOGIC, not real life logic. tv show cops and irl cops are VASTLY different in the kinds of morals each set has. rl cops are deeply unethical but in the world henry spencer inhabits, this is largely not the case. since he's In There and not Out Here, i go with the show's portrayal of cops and their morals and values, instead of real life's. everything i say about cops from here on is about the show's cops, aight? aight lets go

SO the thing about having aspd and knowing on some level that you have it and somethings Different about you is that at some point you HAVE to learn How To Live In A Society Without Immidiatley Getting Ostracized. a common tactic for this is to somehow aquire a set of morals and then just Do That. it's what i personally did, and a lot of those morals came feom whatever community i was in. i liked being here, they had some set of morals, and i just adopted those and treated it as truth. over the years this process has become a lot more refined but generally my morals align with the community i find myself in- namely, queer leftists. so a LOT of my moral beliefs come with interacting with queer leftists at length (because, since i was queer, and thus interacted w a lot of leftists) and going "yeah, that makes sense, this is now a moral standard for me"

so tldnr you need to find a community with some moral tenants that you generally agree with and also like, which sounds like a no brainer but its like. a bit different yk? for me PERSONALLY there really isnt much of an internal set of checks and balances that make me agree w my morals under all costs and i can like. turn it off if i need to

but back to the spencers: being a cop is really good for this. the moral set is easy- you're a cop. you care a lot about The Law. ergo your morals are just... the laws are good and breaking tbem is bad. short and simple and to the point

additionally, being a cop means you get to engage in risk taking behavior and get PAID for it! people dont think youre a crazy reckless thrill seeker, they think you're a HERO! and who needs remorse when you're dealing with criminals? you dont NEED to feel bad about power tripping or intimidating them, its totally fine. its fine. its fine

also relationship issues- henry's divorced, that's not uncommon for pwaspd in relationships. sometimes its poorly managed and/or they wont change and even if theyre stable enough not to be dangerous or abusive, it could be an unpleasant experience for a lot of different reasons- arguments being a massive problem when they happen (the remorse thing- good luck actually getting an apology outta them), worry over the risky behavior being met with flippiance, general lack of emotional vunerability. stuff like that

all this btw is based off my real relationship struggles between me and my fiance who does NOT have aspd (we r like... total opposites its so funny. top 10 funniest matchups of all time)

back to shawn. he is a lot like his father in many ways but the main reason i thought he had aspd is just... he treats EVERYTHING with flippiance and sarcasm. even when hes locking in and being serious, there's still an underlying feeling that he's Just Having Fun With This, no matter the situation. which, this isnt like an official criterion or whatever, but like... i know a LOT of guys with aspd. most of them talk like this. there's always a sense of emotional detachment from most things, because there is one, because they have aspd. i jokingly call this the "sociopath lilt" because theres also that sort of, up-and-down inflection (that shawn has!) that comes with it. its so funny it just makes other pwaspd instantly clockable to me. get thin sliced loser

but once i started thinking about it, more things add up... he's CALLED OUT on his risk taking behavior and flippiance towards serious subject matter IN THE SHOW! he's had a ton of jobs and while i can't prove why he kept leaving them, aspd and having a job... don't mix well. i keep getting fired because i keep beefing w my manager, and i can see the same thing happening to shawn, or maybe he broke a rule one too many times, or got caught in a restricted area, or broke something thru carelessness

and it IS played for comedy but he very often tends to not respect the wishes and autonomy of the people he interacts with, ESPECIALLY gus. he cares naught for anything gus has going on with his job and wether or not he'll get in trouble if he leaves early or does whatever scheme shawn cooked up, and generally sort of treats him not very kindly a lot- which isnt to say their friendship is BAD, its just a pattern of behavior yk?

thats all i can think of off the top of my head rn, but yeah imo shawn is a very realistic take on a guy with aspd whos just like. a regular guy with a mental illness thats to some degree managed, some degree not. very "adhd kid went thru some shit and developed aspd" coded (theres a link; if you abuse a kid with adhd theres a HUGE chance theyll develop conduct disorder and later aspd) (also i guess "some shit" for shawn was the divorce and also being raised by a guy with aspd and being influenced by how he thought a lot)

he's not like, dangerous or abusive or anything, he just has his quirks that can cause problems for him or give the people close to him grief, but its kind of like... an affectionate sort of grief, yk?he just reminds me of myself in a lot of ways. and i like that even in a hc theres SOME character out there that isnt like, a serial killer. imagine having a mental illness and all the characters with it are evil. like yeah theyre cool characters but can i have SOMETHING else for once PLEASE

also lassie has npd send tweet

[queer-starwars-bracket]

Queer Star Wars Characters (Round 3): General Bracket Match 16

Sky Graf | Identity: non-binary | Media: The High Republic Quest for Planet X

Sky Graf was a young member of the wealthy Graf family. A year before the Night of Sorrow, their father went missing looking for Planet X. To prove themselves to their family and possibly find their father, they stole their older brother’s ship the Brightbird and deemed up with Dass Leffbruk (who had previously made it to Planet X) and the Jedi padawan Rooper Nitani to use a Force artifact to try to find Planet X during the great hyperspace race. The Force artifact brought them backwards through the planets Dass had recently visited, where they face challenges while also trying to outrun Sky’s brother. During their journey, they also had to take the Path of the Open Hand member Fel Ix as a hostage. Fel Ix began to break through his cult programming, and when the news of a possible battle between the Path and the Republic reached the crew of the Brightbird, he convinced Sky to give up the search for Planet X to travel to Dalna. Fel Ix succeeded by appealing to Sky’s connection with their father by pointing out how he was a father himself. Working with Fel Ix, Sky helped defeat the Graf code that was corrupting the communication buoys in the Dalna sector, preventing more violence during the Night of Sorrow. Their brother, Helis, eventually caught up with them. But the siblings were able to talk about their feelings and reconcile. The two of them would fly the Brightbird together and continue to prospect. But Sky would no longer chase their father’s ghost.

Sky’s lifestyle was a combination of the hard and technical life of a pilot and hyperspace prospector combined with the luxury of their family’s level of wealth. They are very intelligent when it comes to science. They are confident, with a prickly exterior. They didn’t connect with Fel Ix the way Dass or Rooper did until the end, not wanting to try to understand the perspective of someone who tried to kill them. When things got serious, they showed a surprising capacity of violence and a willingness to do anything to achieve their goals. They only felt like they had unconditional love from their father, his disappearance driving them even further in conflict with their family. At the end of the book, they are more at peace, but still eager to make their own name separate from the Graf dynasty. Unusually for transgender characters in Star Wars, there is explicit discussion in their internal monolog about how they felt gender dysphoria when they started to go through puberty and how their father got them a binder.

Sabé | Identity: bisexual | Media: Queen’s Trilogy/Darth Vader comics

Sabé, born Tsabin, was a member of a family of musicians who set their daughter on the same path. However, she was only skilled enough to ever have a supporting role and instead volunteered to be one of Queen Amidala’s handmaidens. She became Padmé’s most trusted operative, pretending to be the Queen during the Invasion of Naboo. After Padmé’s term as queen ended, she remained her operative and worked with Tonra, a member of Naboo’s security force, to attempt to free slaves on Tatooine. They eventually made contact with the White Suns, a Tatioone slave liberation movement. When the Clone Wars began, Sabé once again acted as Padmé’s decoy when Padmé was away from Coruscant conducting an investigation. There she learned Anakin and Padmé were married. However, to make sure Padmé didn’t have her closest confidant, Palpatine blasted Sabé’s brain with the Dark Side until she didn’t want to work closely with Padmé anymore. Sabé spent the rest of the war helping the White Suns.

After Padmé died, Sabé founded an organization known as the Amidalans- a rebel cell consisting of Naboo (including some of the other handmaidens), who sought to avenge Padmé. They attempted to assassinate Vader (who they deemed responsible) on multiple occasions. Sabé focused on deception, preventing to work with Vader to find Padmé’s killer and infiltrating Crimson Dawn.  until she figured out that Vader was Anakin. Remembering how Padmé’s last words (which had been recorded) was “There’s still good in [Anakin]”, she decided to actually become Vader’s operative. Her given reason was that the Empire and Vader did bring order to the galaxy, but it is just as likely she is following her queen’s last order to attempt to bring the man she loved back to the light. She remained by Vader’s side even when her fellow handmaidens came to “rescue” her. Her last appearance in the comics was Vader abandoning her on a beach until she could decide to fully commit to the Dark Side (emotionally speaking).

Sabé had crushes on a handful of people and even a romantic relationship with Tonra, but her most important was her romantic love for Padmé. These feelings were requited, with Queen’s Hope creating a love triangle where Sabé represented ideology and duty and Anakin was selfish love. As we know, Padmé chose Anakin, but a deciding factor was Sabé’s self esteem being temporarily shattered by Palpatine. Her wider moral view seems to have degraded after spending over two decades focusing on avenging Padmé instead of joining the wider Rebellion. However, even working for the Empire, she hasn’t gone completely evil yet- doing things like pretending to kill a bunch of refugees to gain their loyalty instead of actually killing them.

[ir-abelas-vhenan]

Stop flooding the Leliana tag with mediocre white men

You're already evey fucking where, so do you really have to pollute queer characters as well

Oh, tumblr. It took a little less than a week for someone to remind me why I left the first time (don't worry, anon, give me another month and I'm sure I'll disappear again and the internet will once again be only what you want it to be.)

I would have asked this anon, but since they felt safer being cruel behind the veil (ha?) of anonymity I suppose I'd like to check in with people who have been here longer.

I was a teenager the first time I was on here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but tags are meant to be used to describe the contents of a post, yeah?

If so, since my return to tumblr I have made one (1) post with a tag that would be relevant to anon's frustration here (the name Leliana), and I did so because...I discussed what it might be like if she were fighting her demons (in the form of Marjolaine) for longer than she has by the time we meet her in the first game. Idk. The tag felt appropriate to me, but I'm willing to make anything a learning experience, even if it came about less than kindly.

Secondly, I won't deny that I've made a significant amount of posts in the almost-week that I've been back, but I struggle to pin down exactly what was meant by "you're already every fucking where", so just in case.

1. If you're referring to white men being every fucking where then yeah, I'm just as devastated as you are that I'm this interested in one, anon. But unfortunately the best way to work through that for me is to post my silly little thoughts, find community, and then, in due time, fade back into nothingness.

2. If however, this anon meant that I'M every fucking where...I've made quite a few posts since I came back, yeah. I've been using the tag system as I currently understand it (using them to suggest the content contained within each post). To anyone else in a similar boat, who feels I may have ruined a place where they found comfort and safety...I hate that I have disrupted a space you enjoy.

Solas is the main focal point of my interest with the games right now, undeniably, but I include other characters in those conversations because they mean the world to me, too, and I think they belong in the ideas I've shared.

And trust me, I really truly do understand anon's (your, should you read this) frustration. It isn't fun when something you hate is getting a ton of love and making it harder to find the content you'd prefer.

That, however, inspires a second question about how tumblr operates in the years since I left: the block button still exists too, yeah?

I am sorry for your frustration, and I empathize with it. But I will not take the initiative to smother myself when it is in each individual's control who they do and do not seek content from on the "I am here to talk about a thing I am passionate about" website. I love these games (well. I love three of them). I love the depth of these characters. I hope I did not destroy the love YOU hold for your favorites. But I am here, anon, even if it's just until I feel I've finished dumping my immediate thoughts. I encourage you to either speak with me further about how you think I might be better if I've genuinely done something wrong, or remove me from your digital world. You have the power here. Use it wisely.

[redscullyrevival]

Vid Notes: You Stupid B****

When first planning to make this vid I was hesitant to use girl in red's "You Stupid Bitch" but after test running a few other songs I eventually convinced myself it was the best option for what I wanted to focus on.

To me, Our Flag Means Death is a series that uses it's setting along with it's varied LGBTQ+ characters to explore messy queerness without coming off as "poor representation".

Everyone is already complicit in social, sexual, moral, whatever ambiguity - they're friggin' pirates. They are all, quite literally, in the same boat with no one singled out by the production as being worse than or more righteous than any others under their flag, ya feel me? Like… Come on, you get it right? Yeaaaah, you get it. *finger guns*

I edit fan vids because I can use the images and narratives of shared stories to create my own dialogues of interest. I make things with the intent of being seen and understood as a person, not just for the sake of presenting a show and going, "Remember when that happened? Yeah, that was cool…" I use media and music to re-direct focus on to what I want to say; and this video is a discussion on how raising our own standard together is what defines love and community, not a series of boxes we need to make sure we're checking - or avoiding.

As such, I really enjoyed the notion that even though we can all recognize calling someone you claim to be perfect for and love a stupid bitch isn't exactly a nice thing to do it is still immensely relatable. I wanted the raw and slightly mean sting of the chorus to aid me in playing with the show's emotionality and humor.

Since fan vids typically operate the same way normal music videos do it is always easier to edit to a song as though it is representing a particular character; by either being about them or insinuating through the edit they're in 'possession' of the singing voice.

Desperate to avoid accidentally presenting the show's messy queerness as something one sided I have tried my best to edit in a way that express a mutually held voice between the two main characters.

Quickly establishing and then maintain throughout the vid that Blackbeard and Bonnet are both calling the other a stupid bitch (that both are 'singing' the song to each other) required imagery consistency on a level I have rarely aimed for. I couldn't show Blackbeard more or less than I did Bonnet and most importantly I couldn't arrange footage in a way that would emotionally direct one as being more present than the other within the lyrical rhythm.

Our Flag Means Death is an incredibly tight production which is a blessing in that shots are composed with great consistency and the editing holds an even pace across both seasons, making it a series that is easy to pluck clips from. It is not however a series with a lot of fat and with 18 episodes total I found myself running into footage spacing issues by the time I had finished laying down the first minute of the song.

Blah blah no one gives a shit - all I'm sayin' is that this wasn't easy to make, yeah?

This vid required a lot of footage wrangling and trying out 20 something combos of clips for 7 seconds of song over and over and over. Which, ya know, I suppose that's the hobby at the end of the day but this particular project was wrought with microscopic footage management that got me lost in the sauce. I'm happy to have pulled through with the help of my beta viewer Lee who may not have had any choice in the matter but I would still like to thank all the same.

On top of all that (lmfao) I also REALLY wanted the majority of this vid to fall in line with how I've had to edit for my non-cannon same sex ships in the past, culminating in a sort of switcharoo gotcha for no real reason other than my own amusement.

Boring bits for posterity:

About five days planning

Week and a half of editing

Probably like half a bottle of Dry Eyes

Only spent two days coming to terms with the indifference for which my work will be met (most of my stuff has not cleared this hurtle in recent years)!

Deepest point is five layers

[fiadh-doodles]

Obligatory, you can be trans in the game, there is a trans character that’s prominently featured. The goblins aren’t connected to any race other than the points you’ve made up.

The whole suppressing a goblin rebellion plot everyone was calling racist and problematic actually turned out to be an operation where the goblins were framed by the actual antagonists and the goblins were innocent all along. This is revealed later in the game.

I’m sorry your upset. Be better. You embarrass the real members of the trans community by getting upset at a non issue, now speak out against atomic heart funding a terrorist nation attacking a peaceful one, thanks.

Made up? This is a text book case of blood libel. This is a game made by neo nazis that uses the IP of a known antisemite. The goblins are very clearly antisemtic caricatures. The inclusion of a shofar silenced by a non-kosher cheese that references the Fettmilch pogroms of 1612 is included in the game. It is so blatantly antisemtic. Y'all just care more about a dogshit game than jewish lives.

The trans woman character is voiced by an unlisted va that gives her a masculine voice. Her name is SirOna Ryan, aka he she ryan. A friend who hadn't seen her since pre-transition & in years immediately clocked her & recognized her. It's blatantly transphobic. The dev team is also so notoriously homophobic that this is the only queer character in the game. A transphobic caricature of a trans woman.

Supressing a slave revolt is pro slavery. It doesn't matter if the slaves turned out to "be good all along"(also a deeply weird a fucked up narrative in it's own right), it's racist regardless. Y'all care more about this dogshit game than y'all do about racism.

I am a real trans person. I am now officially living in the worst state in the US to exist as a trans person because it is now A FELONY TO BE TRANS IN PUBLIC in my state. If I am openly trans in this state I can be arrested, charged, sent to prison, and if I don't die in prison, will have 0 rights if I make it out of prison. Which I doubt because my government wants us dead. This legislature was lobbied for using money & rhetoric from JKR's campaign for trans genocide.

A town in my state has also just been revealed that its CITY COUNCIL has compiled a HIT LIST agaisnt queer people & their families in that town. These are real world issues that I live with. My life as a trans person is in danger. I'll never be able to start T here, or get a hysterectomy. My friend can't get top surgery now. My little sibling can't get any trans affirming healthcare now either. I can't afford to leave, and even if I could, I would never be able to leave my people behind.

This is what giving the TERF Supreme more money and power does. She is personally funding trans genocide with y'all's money because y'all don't care about trans lives.

I'm an embarassment? You can't even say that too me off anon & with your full chest. I, and every trans person in my state are fearful for our lives more than ever. How long until we start getting rounded up? My state is notorious for how torturous our conversion camps are, I don't want to find out what they'll do to us when they've got us all locked up in prisons, but that is now a very real reality I face.

But y'all don't care about trans lives or jewish lives or BIPOC or any of that. You want to play a bad game & not face any backlash for it. You want to never be confronted with the objective reality of your choices. Y'all could choose to simply never talk about online, but that has never seemed to occur to y'all. No, y'all wear your bigotry like a point of pride to purposely agitate marginalized folks. Y'all can't even do the BARE MINIMUM to be decent human beings. I don't give a single fuck about y'all's opinion about trans people being "embarassments" for being upset at y'all for funding our genocide.

Anothing thing, I'm slavic. 2nd gen Polish. I'm very tapped into the war with Ukraine and how awful Russia is as a colonial superpower. I have living family that remembers how bad living under Russian rule is and family living in Poland right now. But I wasn't talking about a terrorist attack being funded by a game and IP that is frankly hardly anyone is talking about & isn't anywhere close to having the cultural chokehold HP still has. Made by a game studio with less than 40k followers on twitter. I was talking about a deeply racist, antisemtic, transphobic IP being used to make a deeply racist, antisemtic, transphobic game that funds trans genocide.

BUT HERE IS MY OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON ATOMIC HEART: Don't buy it & don't support the devs that help fund terrorist attacks & have anti-Ukrainian sentiments everywhere in their game.

ALSO DON'T GIVE MONEY TO THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL & INFLUENTIAL TERF TO FUND TRANS GENOCIDE TO PLAY A BROKEN GAME MADE BY NEO NAZIS THAT IS PRO-SLAVERY;BLOOD LIBEL;ANTISEMITISM:THE GAME!!

LITERALLY get fucked. Y'all are sick & twisted & I hope y'all have a horrible life. Genuinely.

[zahri-melitor]

I am FORGING ONWARDS, given I'm down to 3 more Holiday Specials to go, then getting back to this year's Santa story.

Next up is 'Tis the Season to be Freezin' (2021)

Window Shopping - Robin and Mr Freeze. I finally get a new Tim story in a Holiday Special and it has to be BTAS!Tim. Anyway Tim goes to buy Bruce's christmas present from a not-at-all suspicious shopkeeper who mysteriously has gifts nobody else does:

Interesting beard, sir, as is that Spock in command yellow holding a lightsaber.

Only to be interrupted by Mr Freeze freezing Old Gotham Square during an oncoming blizzard so he could reminisce about something good from his childhood. Tim talks Victor down and gets him back to Arkham, then we get to see the Christmas presents he's giving.

The Syphoning - Vixen and the Super-Pets. Fun Mari story! Penguin's captured the Super-Pets and is trying to steal their powers and mind control them to do his bidding.

I hate to say it, but this feels really fanficcy, down to Mari giving a speech to Cobblepot to go get some therapy.

Bizarro v Seasonal Depression: Dawn of Climate Change! - Bizarro.

Bizarro text gives me a headache, I'm sorry, particularly reading a story written wholly in it. In any case, this story is about a bunch of villains melting the 6 polar icecaps of Bizarro World and Bizarro getting the water vapour refrozen into a single icecap.

Stay Frosty - Firestorm and Killer Frost.

I liked this one! Killer Frost has reformed, but Firestorm is on monitor duty with her and doesn't quite trust that she has turned over a new leaf. Eventually he trusts her, after they take down the Royal Flush Gang together.

Snow Date - Polar Boy.

Firstly, Andrew Dalhouse deserves some praise here for the colouring job, which I really enjoyed.

Polar Boy and Comet Queen have a date while enjoying the ice sculptures of winter festival characters on different planets that Polar Boy made. Also they defeat Captain Freeze who wanted to steal Captain Cold's cold gun.

A Change of Heart - Harley Quinn and Blue Snowman. It's interesting when occasionally the pandemic gets a form of reference in comics. Here's it's a new lethal virus that causes pustules, which has infected Ivy. Harley tries to cure Ivy, first by getting the virus frozen (which freezes Ivy into a block of ice) then stealing an ancient healing rod to heal her.

Only this theft interrrupts a sting operation run by Hawkman and after some confusion, Harley and Blue Snowman team up with him.

Hawkman gets the rod, they heal Ivy with the power of friendship (okay 'heart, community, belief') and all is well.

Christmas: Cold and Fast - Flash and Captain Cold. This is essentially a sequel/rewrite of a A Flash Christmas Carol from 2016 - it hits all the same beats.

Captain Cold has dressed up as a donations Santa and is collecting to get toys to all the children of Central City. Barry suspects Snart's just doing it for Crimez reasons but gets talked into helping: Snart creates snow and an ice rink for the city, while Barry delivers all the presents while dressed up as Santa.

We also get a surprise last minute appearance of You Know Who.

Break the Ice - JLQ.

Solstice party for the Justice League Queer.

Oh hey, Ray Terrill! I haven't read any of your recent stuff.

This is...fine? The crew have to calm down Sigrid Nansen, Ice Maiden, who is having a breakdown about identity (and now wants to be Glacier). The themes. They are obvious.

[battle-of-alberta]

hypothetical comic where calvin goes to therapy for being a bisexual disaster among other things.

so like. i deliberately don’t say one way or the other where on the platonic-romantic spectrum ed and cal fall on because of a lot of reasons but mostly just because i think the tension and ambiguity is 1. most interesting/funniest and 2. most accessible for multiple readers who want some room to imagine, particularly because being aroacespec i get that romance repulsion Happens sometimes. It happens for me occasionally so I don’t want to lock anything in stone, at least for the main duo the story centres around.

that said i do have a whole hypothetical mental image of “if it was a romo/sexual relationship, this is how the characters would theoretically react over this range of time/historically.” because I love hypotheticals that don’t have to be “canon” and because I am interested in queer history as a queer person myself, especially in this province where... well. if you know you know.

Now that i am getting paid real money to actually research queer history locally? I think about it way more.

on to the hypotheticals if you are interested...

- i think calvin would have had an awareness of his slightly-fluid sexuality at the very least from the 70s on, especially because sexuality was such a huge part of white collar oil man culture in some of the worst most misogynistic ways but also for other reasons. I think he definitely would have started questioning what was “normal” and “acceptable” at that time, but I think he learned very quickly not to ask too many questions. He did grow up on Bible Bill’s radio show in the 30s, which set this tone of repression, eugenics, and hostility that we are still reeling from.

- his victorian upbringing combined with this 1930s ethos plus all the nostalgic romanticism built up in the 1910s is the emotional soup that makes calvin hallucinate that he’s actually a normal person who CAN have the job and the wife and the white picket fence and 1.5 kids occasionally. He tries not to overthink it most of the time.

- i expect this conversation didn’t take place until the 2010s. despite calvin’s cushy workplace benefits i think mental health, therapy, etc. especially for someone in such a traditional conservative environment was just not considered even if it was available earlier. and talking about sexuality? forgetaboutit. that said, I think calvin is more progressive than we give him credit for sometimes and I actually think he would be most likely out of any of them to seek this kind of stuff out

- likewise i think after his falling out with ed he does a bad job of patching things up, but once he puts his mind to using his knowledge and skills of being a people person and being genuinely interested and excited about organizations in his city, he figures out how to talk about it with people in his own way. i think when people think about queer history they tend to think of the bar/club scene and it’s more than that, especially after certain events in canadian, american and international queer communities. so by the time he goes looking, there are already resources that have been operating for decades! I don’t know much about the specifics of calgary queer history (yet) but i know that these things absolutely exist to this day.

- eventually some therapists have to learn to work with immortals which they definitely did not cover in their certification.

[wanderingandfound]

Well I woke up at fucking five eighteen am so I might as well make this post while I have time.

I enjoy the feminist, queer-normative settings that fandom (at least by surface level appearances) tries to make, but with Dungeon Meshi I'm seeing people take that shallow fun fandom interpretation and then.... ignore the actual setting?

Like hetero marriage with the intention to produce offspring is a big deal here. My understanding is that Falin and Laios were both engaged as children. Chilchuck and his wife had two of their daughters before they were considered adults. In Laios's party pre-canon there was a female character there only looking for a husband, at least to Chilchuck's understanding and he's pretty decent at figuring out human motivations.

Falin is 23, tall-man maturity is 16 and life expectancy in 60. If she wasn't an adventurer (from what I can tell, it's a more disreputable field than other careers) who cares more about dungeons and her brother than societal norms, she would probably be expected to have a husband already.

People give Toshiro so much grief for proposing to her out of nowhere, and I've only finished volume nine of the manga so I don't know if this gets more detailed later, but like, they had been in the same party for a few years at this point? Like yeah, Toshiro doesn't know her as well as Marcille and Laios do, but it's clear he was trying to get to know her better. One of his frustrations with Laios is that Laios kept crashing his attempted dates with Falin!

Here's the thing, all these characters are beautifully flawed as fuck. But the disproportionate hate I've seen towards Toshiro is bad and probably racist. Toshiro is not just fantasy-Japanese, he's also nobility and racially marked as Other on the island. As such, he has so many rules for etiquette/manners/propriety he's operating under. And we have seen that he is rather quiet and withdrawn (he didn't correct anyone about what his name is, when he told his party thank you they started crying, he regrets that he didn't tell Falin how he felt even though he did propose to her suggesting that his proposal was more formal (as befitting someone of his class!!!) than emotional). You know who else is quiet? Falin. She doesn't give Toshiro an answer to his proposal, doesn't seem to talk about it with others, was ostracized in her hometown and at magic school and when Marcille took an interest in her work she decided to just show Marcille the dungeon with minimal explanation as she went, after her first resurrection Laios makes her promise not to sacrifice herself again but he doesn't say "sacrifice" he says "don't do that again" and doesn't catch her quiet protestations that she doesn't know what she did, and she promises anyways! Heck, one of the ways we know she is just as into all of this as her brother is how animated she gets when she finds out they've been eating monsters.

I'm not familiar with Japanese current and historical cultural norms and fantasy tropes. I am sure there's nuance to Toshiro's characters that I'm unaware of. But I don't think we should take Chilchuck's and Mickbell's commentary of his proposal being out of nowhere as if that's the objective truth, and not also informed by their halfling (and presumably commoner) cultural background. Like, fuck, iconic romantic lead of English literature Mr. Darcy has a lot in common with Toshiro, and at least when the latter first proposed there was no open animosity between him and the object of his affections!

Do I ship Toshiro/Falin? No, not particularly. But for a fandom that is very defensive of the autistic characters (and rightly so) I see not a lot of grace being extended to someone whose communication issues are wrapped up in Following The Rules, Not Improvising, and Staying Quiet About Your Feelings.

Anyways, my second issue with people ignoring the heteronormative aspect of the setting is people outright saying that Marcille is motivated mainly by her romantic interest in Falin. Which. I love subtext and shipping but not at the cost of the actual text! Not that sapphic love is simple, but some of the takes I've seen (and I'm talking about longer, intentional analysis, not memes) ignore the nuances we see play out on the page and how Marcille's feelings are a somewhat complicated tangle that she seems to ignore with a philosophy of "it's fine and if it isn't then I will make it fine!" Like, I ship Marcille/Falin more than any other pairing in this show, but I feel that romantic interpretations should enrich and interweave and support the other feelings that are there (fear of others dying before her, first friend, the way after Falin's first resurrection Marcille was like "oh I don't care how you've grown you're still the same little kid to me" because change is scary and time brings death and also by elven standards Marcille isn't an adult yet either). Not bulldoze and flatten the text to use generic romantic interpretations instead.

Dungeon Meshi has such beautiful and thoughtful worldbuilding. There's both fantasy racism informed by biological distinctions, and real-world racism informed by differences in appearances and culture. There's complex ecosystems both in the plants and animals and in the human (and demihuman) societies. The backgrounds of every character inform their choices. Different cultural groups have different beauty standards, and their ages (and gender presentation? not sure how much of that has been intentional and how much has been a mistranslation) are misinterpreted by people not in their group (Namari (who has presumably been around tall-men her whole life unlike Senshi who didn't know halflings were their own thing) referring to Falin, someone she has known for quite a while now, as being a teenager to forties).

Again I'm only on volume 9, but I've been told that there is a canon lesbian in the manga. And without knowing who she is, I feel like she's the exception that proves the rule? Dungeon Meshi was released 2014–2023. I'm arguing that the heteronormativity in this world is intentional, not incidental. Dungeon Meshi has a lot to say about family, including adoptive family (Kaka and Kiki, Kabru, Senshi, Thistle) and so far all the adoptive parents have either been in hetero relationships or single. I think the absence of queer relationships is intentional, and while I'm all for queering the text I am more interested in what that queerness looks like in a heteronormative setting that values marriage and children, rather than just ignoring the setting so that queerness itself is not a source of conflict.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Not the same anon but I love your answer to the louis question ! and you are SO right, many people who hc him as such 1. don't ship him with anyone 2. don't really care about him as a character outside "haha he hates sherlock" jokes so it really feels disingenuous. aroace headcanon in general from allo people often give me the ick, they're treated like the woke cousin of the "pair the spares" trope

I definitely know at least a small handful of people who headcanon Louis as aro or ace or aroace because they themselves are. And that's fine! They seem to have a very different relationship to that aspect of themselves than I or most of the community I have built around myself over the last decade, but that doesn't make them wrong.

So I don't think the only reason one would make this headcanon is because they're dismissive of Louis as a character. There are other reasons.

But there are definitely some people who seem to be using it to add something to their version of his character. He's one of my favorites and I really think he (and most of the major cast, honestly!) really has a rich, complicated characterization in canon. But a lot of it isn't applicable to certain transformative uses of his personality, or people are bad at reading and don't pick up on it, or they just aren't interested in it, so they sort of mentally replace the canon personality with stuff that interests them: a queer label or funny jokes, etc.

I think his having a distinctive sexuality (which he doesn't in canon) makes him feel more like a person when they cut off, say, his stoicism, his ever-present Operations Manager excellence, his fastidiousness, his ten-star ability to compartmentalize and behave rationally despite his storm of emotions, or whatever else. To some people, sexuality is a really important part of someone's character. So they want him to have one, and give him one.

Sometimes allo headcanons or ace or aro people make me uncomfortable and unhappy because you can just feel the unsmothered aphobia in it. But sometimes a-spec people also have them, and it's like, please, you need to unpack some things. Or the creator needed to unpack some things, depending on how rooted in canon it is. Every marginalization gets this.

(For what it's worth, I don't see Mrgh bits of this aspect in the canon. I have see a lot of aphobia in fanworks for this series)

I think Louis might be a product of stereotypes, and maybe some carelessness. But I think him being headcanoned that way bothers me less because it doesn't feel inherently biased, more a little...presumptuous, maybe. It's a stronger assumption about him than I'd prefer to make.