#this is also meant to be in a jokey way

[splatoon-confession-box]

If I see one of y'all complaining about Shiver Simps i'm getting out the pool noodle. (was on fistbump)

Frye had popularity this time and Shiver won from pure skill in battles, so that argument is off the table.

[get-more-bald]

the fuck do you mean I have to leave....

[thresholdbb]

Thank you for bearing with me while I was temporarily put back on my hinges. Currently sourcing a screwdriver and a hammer to become properly unhinged again

[blanketforcas]

hi there I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what were your thoughts on the radio co concert? How is Jensen as a concert person and do you think it was any different from how he does his solo cons? I feel like it was more serious (there was a part where he was like guys this is a serious concert, please behave or something along those lines but I can’t tell if it was in a joking way?) - either way as a massive Jensen fan I’m like OMG HES SO AMAZING AND EVERYTHUNG HE DOES IS SO GOOD, but I want to hear from people who have other perspectives 😊💖

oh hi nonny! :) I really enjoyed the concert!! I barely even regret staying up till like 7 in the morning asdkj. I didn't expect him to be singing WOM so early on, I was floored.

It was definitely a bit more serious than it would be at a con, but that's to be expected ofc! He was a little nervous at the beginning (who wouldn't be?) but it was nice to see him relax more as the concert went on. I think I still prefer the casual vibe of something like SNS, but I very much enjoy both and I hope RC does more concerts! (preferably cheaper ahum not through CE ahum and perhaps in Europe maybe? a girl can dream 😅)

I also really like the new songs they played!! I'm a sucker for a good country vibe ngl

[theemporium]

YAYYYYY I FOUND IT FINALLY

hi love hope ur doing well

can i request 💛and no.16 with lando?

thank u sm i love ur work🤍🤍

thank you for requesting!🫶🏽

16. massaging them

.

“Oh fuck, that’s the spot.”

You couldn’t help but snort, the noise joyful and bashful. “Shut up, I have neighbours!”

“Not my fault you’ve got hands crafted by the gods themselves,” Lando retorted, his words slightly muffled by the way he buried his face in one of your pillows. “It feels good. I might have to replace Jon with you.” 

“I’ll pass,” you laughed, shaking your head in amusement even if he couldn’t see. “You seem like a needy client.” 

He let out a high-pitched noise of complaint. “I’m a fucking delight, I’ll have you know.” 

“Yeah, that’s exactly why you barged into my apartment demanding a massage,” you replied, sarcasm dripping from your words. 

It was only partially an exaggeration to the truth. 

With summer break in full swing, it meant that Lando finally had time to relax and step away from the crazy, intense world that is Formula One. It meant he had time to spend with his family and friends that he didn’t usually get during the season, even when they came to race weekends. It meant he could pretend to feel a little normal, even if his life was far from it.

Except for the fact he still had to train like a Formula One driver. 

Which he was insistent he could do without the help of Jon. He insisted the man deserved a break of his own, to enjoy his vacation before they had to return to Woking later in the month. He insisted he would be able to follow his routine without the man watching over him. 

And he could do it. He just forgot the aftermath of it all, which was how he came storming into your apartment after his latest workout, whining and complaining about how stiff and sore he felt. And somewhere in his complaining, you agreed to do Jon’s job for him. 

“People don’t complain this much about helping their friends,” Lando commented, turning his head to the side so his cheek was squished against your pillow and his words were no longer muffled.

“People also don’t sound like they are filming a bad porno when they are getting a massage,” you shot back, finding some pleasure in the way Lando’s cheeks burned pink at your words. 

“Please,” he huffed out, clearing his throat in bed. He tried to stay light-hearted, playful, jokey. He tried to focus on the banter, rather than the way your hands felt across his skin. “This isn’t even close to what I sound like in bed.” 

“I know.” 

“I sound so—” He paused, his brows furrowing as he processed your response before snapping his head back to look at you. “What do you mean, you know?” 

“Carlos was your teammate,” you shrugged, trying to bite back your smile. “And he was always in the room next to you in hotels. He’s heard some stuff.” 

“I—” Lando tried to speak but words failed him. Memories flashed through his mind, nights he had spent in his hotel room alone. Nights where his hand was wrapped around himself with you on his mind and your name on his lips and—

“I’m kidding!” You laughed, unaware of his internal dilemma as you pushed him back down on the bed, your hands smoothing along the backs of his shoulders. “Carlos didn’t hear shit. I’m just winding you up.” 

“Pfft, yeah, I knew that,” Lando laughed nervously, his heart hammering in his chest despite your reassurance. “Carlos wishes he knew what I sounded like in bed.” 

“More like you wished you knew what he sounded like,” you snorted. “Your crush on Carlos wasn’t subtle.” 

“Yeah,” he murmured, burying his face into your pillow once again. “My crush on Carlos. Totally. That was it.”

.

[cy-cyborg]

Toph Beifong doesn’t hold up as disability representation - Disability in the Media

[ID: A screenshot of Toph, a twelve-year-old girl with black hair in a loose, green and tan short-sleeve shirt and shorts, cheering in an arena. Next to text written in a rough, blocky font: "Disability in Media - Toph Beifong Doesn't hold up as disability representation" /End ID]

Avatar the Last Airbender is one of my all-time favourite TV-shows, and Toph is still easily one of my favourite members of Team Avatar. I was a few years younger than Toph when the show first started airing, and being a disabled kid who was into martial arts, constantly being dismissed by my able-bodied opponents and teachers, meant that I connected very strongly with her right from the get-go.

But upon my last couple of rewatches of the series, I began to come to the realisation that my opinions on Toph as a shining example of good disability representation were... well, pretty heavily influenced by my nostalgia for the show and that many aspects of Toph's character just don't hold up today. Which, honestly is fair, the show is nearly 19 years old (if it were a person in my country, it would be old enough to drink) and I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect every part of every character from an 19 year old show to age well. So today I wanted to talk about the things I think Avatar the original Last Airbender did right with Toph, where I think they missed the mark, and what changes I think would need to be made to Toph to make her work for a modern audience.

So let's start with why I think Toph doesn't really hold up as "good disability representation" today, and the elements of her character that just haven't aged as well.

For me, one of the biggest issues I noticed upon rewatching the show, is how often we are told (often by Toph herself) that she is blind, but how infrequently we are actually shown it's impact on her life beyond her bending or outside of jokey contexts. Outside of her bending, we only ever see her blindness impacting her ability to do things like read or write, otherwise, she functionally has full vision -so far as the audience is informed - with the only exceptions being when she's in the air or water (e.g. on Appa or in the submarines) or in loose soil (e.g. the desert). Having places and circumstances where she doesn't have access to her power that allows her to "see" was a step in the right direction, but I do think it would have been better if her seismic sense wasn't quite as accurate, even in the most ideal of circumstances.

But why? Well, I think Suki explains it really well, long before Toph is even introduced. when Sokka says "I should have seen you as a warrior instead of a girl" Suki stops him and says "I am a warrior, but I'm also a girl". Being a warrior and a woman are both important parts of Suki's character, and only recognising her as one or the other means ignoring a big part of who she is, and the same is true for Toph. Being blind is a big part of toph's character that has informed a lot of her life, but so is being a warrior and bending master. Many people see Toph as a warrior or fighter, but ignore her disability, but both are important. She's disabled, and a warrior, and those things don't cancel each other out, the same way being a warrior doesn't diminish Suki's status as a woman.

When the show was still airing though (and even still today) it was very common to see non-disabled fans of the show exclaiming that they honestly forget that Toph is even blind sometimes, with many people going so far as to say that she's not even disabled (and that this was a good thing). While I do think some of that comes from the fact they weren't used to seeing a disabled character as both disabled and an active participant in these kinds of stories, I do think this mostly happened because of the show's lack of, well, showing the impact of her blindness on her daily life and allowing her earthbending and seismic sense to erase the effects of her disability to some extent. It's much harder to forget a character is blind when it impacts their daily life in ways that are shown to the audience. This doesn't have to be in big, showy ways mind you, showing things subtly but consistently works way better than one "very special episode" type setup.

In the show as it is though, the seismic sense functionally gives Toph a perfect image of her surroundings until it's just not available anymore for *plot reasons*.

[ID: A black and white shot of Toph and how she sees the oponent she's fighting, with shockwaves radiating from him towards her to indicate how she's interpreting the scene. Her foe has jumped into the air and now has his hand dug into the ground of an arena, about to launch rocks towards her. /End ID]

In many ways, her picture of the world is better and clearer than what the non-disabled characters can see, leading to this feeling of her disability being erased. It may have been better though if the seismic sense could give her a general idea of big things in her immediate vicinity but she still missed the finer details, functioning at least a little bit more like a tactile/earthy-vibration version of the limited sight some legally-blind people have in real life. Things like a person's position, movement and overall pose would still be "visible" to her in a general sense, as well as big things in the environment (including things underground, since there are a few plot-points that require that), but smaller things like details about objects and creatures, people's facial expressions or what they're doing with parts of their body that have no direct contact with the ground (like their hands) is less clear. On top of this, she may struggle to detect smaller, lighter objects or creatures that realistically wouldn't cause much of a vibration at all. creatures as small and as light as Momo and Hawky for example might be detectable, but "fuzzy" to her, and anything smaller might make enough of a vibration to tell her it's there when it moves, but not enough for her to be able to tell what specifically it is without some other cue (such as sound). There are a few moments in the show that seem to imply this is what they were initially going for, but it's not really consistent, and is directly contradicted in her debut episode, "the blind bandit" when she explains that she can even "see" something as small as the ants off in the distance.

[ID: A shot of Aang, a twelve-year-old bald boy with an arrow tattoo on his head, dressed in a yellow and orange outfit, standing with Toph at night. In the foreground is an anthill will a trail of ants, which Aang is looking for. /End ID]

With an adjustment like what I'm suggesting though, she still serves her narrative purpose of teaching Aang the importance of being able to wait and listen - possibly even more so, as her needing to wait and collect more information in order to get a clearer image before striking, would back-up what Bumi tells Aang that he needs in an earth bending master. It would also still help to illustrate the connectedness of the world, a theme Toph continues to embody heavily in The Legend of Korra, while still showing the ways her disability impacts her more frequently.

When I talked about the "super-crip" trope a while back, I mentioned that one way to avoid the more harmful elements of the trope (where the character's disability is erased by their powers) is to use the ability in question more like a mobility or disability aid than a straight-up cure. The power should help them, but shouldn't make their disability redundant. People are creative and we would find ways to use a superpower or magic to help with our disabilities if it were available in real life, but what's the point of including a disabled character if you're just going to functionally erase their disability? For a character like Toph, I think this is the kind of approach that should be taken with her. Her seismic sense still helps her, but it's not a perfect replacement. (Ironically, I did use Toph as a "good" example of that trope, but I do think after this last rewatch, for the reasons I'm discussing here, I might have to backtrack that a bit).

I considered giving an alternative approach here, to keep the sensitivity of toph's seismic sense as it is in the show as is, but giving it draw-backs such as making her susceptible to sensory overload similar to what autistic people experience. However, while replacing one disability with another can work for some characters and stories, I don't think it's the best adjustment to make for Toph or any blind character, largely thanks to this also being a trope. The "blind (or d/Deaf) person who's other senses become super-human to make up for it" trope is very common in fantasy, sci-fi as well as older martial arts films, and while I'm not really the best person to cover it, I do know that members of both the blind and deaf communities have expressed a lot of frustration with it. Toph already falls into this trope quite a bit, and any suggestions I could make would have just dialled that element up to 11, and fixing one problem with another is never a good idea.

Another thing that actually did bug me for a while, even before my most recent rewatch of the show, is how Toph is treated on the rare occasions she does point out something won't working for her. There are a number of times where Toph advocates for herself and points out that something The Gaang is doing isn't accessible to her or sets a boundary to do with her disability, and she's either left behind, her concerns are brushed off or she's ignored entirely. The three most noticeable examples of this are in the Episodes "The Ember Island Players," "The Library," and Toph and Katara's segment of "Tales of Ba Sing Se."

In the Ember Island Players, Toph complains that the seats they have for the play are too high up and too far away, and she's unable to "see" what's happening on stage. Her friends don't really take any notice of her though except for Katara who tells her not to worry, "I'll tell your feet what's happening."

[ID: A shot of Katara, a fourteen-year-old girl with long brown hair and blue eyes, sitting with Toph, who is sitting with her arms crossed, annoying in a theatre seat. Both Toph and Katara are wearing red and gold, fire-themed outfits. Katara is looking at something off-screen. /End ID]

My problem here is that this particular kind of situation is something that is familiar to a lot of disabled people. Even the least independent disabled people I know get annoyed when their access needs or requests for accommodations, even among friends, are ignored and their pushback is brushed off with "don't worry, I'll just help you!" It's one of the first things that many disabled people tell non-disabled folks wishing to be better allies to us: you offering help instead of actually accommodating us isn't a good thing. We don't want to rely on others if we can avoid it, because honestly, non-disabled people often aren't very good at actually helping or in this case, relaying information to us without training and more often than not, it just results in us being left out. I find it very hard to believe a character as independent as Toph would accept that without any protest, especially considering that is pretty much exactly what ends up happening (even if the show didn't really acknowledge it). Katara never actually conveys anything about the play to Toph, except when she's attempting to throw Toph's words back in her face when she asks for clarification about the actor playing her - which ends up backfiring on her.

[ID: A shot from the same location as before, this time Toph has a huge smile on her face and is leaning on the balcony excitedly while Katara is leaning towards her, annoyed by her reaction. /End ID]

While it would have been better if Toph was actually listened to, it would have been…fine? if a justification was given for why they had to sit there (e.g. to avoid being recognised), if Katara had actually described the play for her. This wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have been better at least. In real life, many movies, TV shows (including this show's sequel series, The Legend of Korra) and other forms of visual media have an Audio Description track that does exactly that. If they weren't going to move for Toph to be able to see better, having Katara describe the play could have introduced kids to the fact this is an option. but instead it's brushed off, and I'll admit, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, even back in 2006.

The Library is a bit more forgivable in my opinion, since Toph is still new to the group, but in this episode, she states that she doesn't want to go inside the spirit library because she isn't able to read and therefor there wouldn't be anything for her to do. However, it still would have been nice to see her friends consider this at all before they actually arrived. They could have (and should have) still gone, but some acknowledgement that they at least thought about the inclusion of their disabled friend would have been nice.

[ID: A shot of Aang, Katara, Sokka and another man are talking while looking down at a map on the table. Meanwhile, Toph is sitting on the other side of the table, completely disinterested as she sips from a large ice cup with her feet up on another chair. /End ID]

Alternatively, I do feel like Wan Shi Tong, a self-proclaimed all-knowing-spirit or his assistants would have been able to point her in the direction of something to interest her, since he does imply books aren't the only form of knowledge he collects.

The reason I mention this though is two-fold. In real life, disabled people are very often left out of "fun" group activities, whether that be in formal settings or in casual ones, like hanging out with friends. If the episode had been framed as "the Gaang learns about the library and decides to track it down," I might have been less critical, but it's specifically framed as something that at least starts out as a kind of break for the team where they all take turns picking out fun things to do so they can rest, and Toph's access needs not being considered at all until they're already there hits a bit close to home, especially since they just end up leaving her outside. Secondly, there's also a stereotype that disabled people (and especially blind people) don't belong in academia and places of learning, such as in this case, libraries. This stereotype is about as old as the concept of organised institutions of learning, and definitely isn't unique to AtLA, but the assumption is often that disabled people wouldn't be interested in more formal methods of learning, so it's not worth accommodating us. With blind people in particular, when I've seen this in media, the premise is often "well I can't read anyway so why bother?" which Toph definitely falls into here with no push-back against the trope.

[ID: A close up of Toph and the rest of the group, Katara, Sokka and Aang standing in a desert. Toph shrugs, looking bored, while the others looks confused and surprised with the exception of Katara, who looks mildly annoyed, standing with her hands on her hips. /End ID]

It does make sense that she would have been resistant to going in, and I'm not saying this episode should have turned Toph into a bookwork akin to Wings of Fire's Starflight (another blind character) or anything. But there was a chance in this episode to push back against some of these assumptions, and I think it's a shame they missed it. How cool would it have been if Toph had mentioned not feeling welcomed in more formal learning spaces because of her disability, which was just reinforced by the way her old earthbending instructor and her parents treated her. She decides to go inside the library anyway as "backup" in case something goes wrong, grumbling about it the whole way down. Wan She Tong starts his introduction mostly the same way, saying humans aren't welcome and Toph makes a snarky comment about it. Wan She Tong, equally offended that this human thinks he, the all-knowing-spirit, wouldn't have considered something, shoots back with an annoyed comment about humans being so self-centred. He explains that spirits come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them have eyes, but they can still access his library. She's not the first sightless being in his study, and he-who-knows-ten-thousand-things knows this too. Once everyone is permitted entry, one of the knowledge seekers shows her to a series of slates about a lost earthbending form that she can actually read (or at least, "see" the pictures on) because it's carved. Or instead of a slate, it's a series of statues outlining the form, similar to what Aang and Zuko find in the episode "The Firebending Masters". Perhaps this form is something that helps her develop metal bending later on, and lays the groundwork for Toph becoming interested in teaching in the comics.

And finally, Toph and Katara's segment of Tales of Ba Sing Se. Katara convinces Toph to go get a makeover with her as part of a girl's day. Overall, this segment of the episode is pretty nice, and I liked that they showed that a person's gender expression (in this case, being a tom-boy) doesn't mean they can't like things outside of what we usually associate with that. Tom-boys can like girly things on occasion, and vice-versa, and I think this is an example of an episode that would seem a bit ham-fisted today, but honestly, was needed in 2006. However, there's a throw away joke where Toph says "as long as they don't touch my feet," and it immediately cuts to show spa workers filing down the calluses on her feet in a way so painful several staff are required to hold her down.

[ID: An image of Toph in a bath robe being held down in a chair by two spa workers while a third scrubs at her feet so hard that she is sweating. Meanwhile Toph is fighting against the two holding her down and has a facial expression like she is in a great deal of pain. /End ID]

this might be a minor thing in the grand scheme of the show, but it's still another example of Toph's boundaries about her disability and her access needs being disrespected by her friends, which the show just doesn't acknowledge it at all. People ignoring Toph's wishes about a part of her body she depends on in a much more direct way that others do is played off like a joke in a montage of otherwise enjoyable and goofy activities and this is a very, very common experience in disability circles.

There are a number of other, much more minor issues that show up with Toph as well, such as the fact she's the only one of the main cast who never has an on-screen (or on-page) relationship. not in the original show, not in any of the comics and not in The Legend of Korra. Again, it's not a big issue on it's own, especially because in AtLA, she's young enough where it's possible that she was just not interested yet, and she does have kids in The Legend of Korra where she mentions a relationship with a man named Kanto (Lin's father). So it is implied she does have some form of relationship eventually, but the issue is that it's never shown on screen or on the page. This feeds into a wider pattern in media of disabled characters being the only ones in their respective cast not given on-screen romantic relationships in stories, and so I still think it's worth pointing out, especially since the creators have had a lot of opportunities to correct that by now.

Toph is also portrayed, pretty much undeniably, as the best earthbener in a way that, at times, comes across almost like the creators felt like they need to compensate for her being on the team "despite" her being blind. This trope is one that I think Toph, at least partially, helped to popularise with the current generation of story tellers: The Disabled Savant. In this trope, disabled characters aren't really given the same room for growth as other characters; they aren't permitted to be average or still learning, they start good and get better. If they do progress, they often become the best, which is the case for Toph. To be fair, everyone in the The Gaang is the best at their respective skill by the end of the first series, which is why I say this is a minor point. She dose, however, have the least amount of on-screen growth in skill out of the whole team. Katara starts out barely able to lift any water at all, let alone actually bend it. Sokka is skilled with weapons from the start but does get his butt handed to him a number of times by others with more experience than him whom he learns from throughout his story arc. Zuko spends most of the early-to-middle of the show having things "blow up in his face" (to use his own words) and being belittled by his family of prodigies. While Aang is an airbending and, to a lesser extent, waterbending prodigy, he fails at pretty much everything else for a while before he starts to find his confidence - especially earth and firebending, not to mention the entire situation with locking himself out of the Avatar state. Toph is the only one who doesn't seem to fail or struggle all that much from a combat perspective. She does grow and improve in her bending (she invents metal bending after all) but she never has any moments where she really messes up or even struggles in combat all that much compared to the others.

All of these points and criticisms I've mentioned are not necessarily big in and of themselves, but when looked at together, they build up to create some issues with how Toph is depicted and how the people around her treat her disability

So that's it then? Toph is bad disability rep and Avatar should be "cancelled"?

God no. Like I said at the start, I still adore Toph and Avatar as a whole, but the show is a year away from being two decades old, it's bound to have some elements that don't hold up and I think it's worthwhile discussing them, specifically because I love the show and it's characters. Despite all the negativity I've brought up, I do think there are a lot of things AtLA did well with Toph too.

I've mentioned a few times that we rarely see how Toph's blindness impacts her life outside of her bending and combat abilities, and there's a reason I made that specification. Unsurprisingly, if you know much about the show's development, the ways in which Toph’s blindness and seismic sense impacts her bending and fighting style is one area where the show really does shine, and I still think that is worth a mention. The various types of bending are based on different styles of martial arts, specifically, different types of Kung Fu. Most earthbending in the show takes heavy inspiration specifically from Hung Ga, but Toph is different. Her bending heavily references Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, something unique to her within this world.

The reason for this (outside of simply wanting her to be visually distinct) was because the show’s creators made sure to consider what limitations Toph might have and what parts of the more common earthbending styles wouldn't work for her. Since her connection to the earth was critical in order for her seismic sense to work, they decided on a style that would keep her feet on the ground more, prioritised strong stances with minimal jumping and put more focus on attacking with her upper body. While not an intentional choice, the style they went with for Toph, according to the show's head martial arts consultant, Sifu Kisu, was supposedly developed by a blind woman in real life, at least according to legend. The creators also made further adjustments to the style with the help of martial arts consultants and just watching Toph fight is evident that a lot of love and care was put into the decisions made on that front.

I also appreciate that Toph's disability wasn't off-limits to joke about.

[ID: A picture of Toph waving her hand in front of her face with an exaggerated smile to remind the others she's blind. /End ID]

As I already mentioned, they didn't land 100% of the time, but lot of shows are afraid to use disability as a source of jokes, which would have felt weird and out of place in a show like Avatar. I see this hesitance in real-life too; people get extremely uncomfortable when I joke about my own disabilities and I've heard several people and even disabled comedians talk about the same observation. My last video on Tik Tok that got outside my usual audience was a joke about my prosthetic leg, and every single stictch and duet I received was people saying some variation of "I'm such a bad person for laughing!" "I'm going to hell!" or just straight up asking if they're aloud to laugh. If I didn't want you to laugh, I wouldn't have posted the joke! But joking about disability does make it more approachable. Despite how often Toph and the others made blind jokes though, outside of the one instance I mentioned earlier, they never felt mean-spirited or like they were punching down. Even when a very sleep-deprived Katara was intentionally trying to be.

I think it's also worth keeping in mind the context of the media landscape when Avatar The Last Airbender was airing. Today, characters like Toph are very common, so much so there's a whole trope about them (super-crips) but at the time, having a character with a major disability be a main character in an action-orientated kids show like Avatar was really rare. She wasn't the first of course, but a lot of the time, if they were included, they were almost certainly sad and depressed, wishing for a cure or they were designated to the roles of "Guy in the chair" (which is a character, usually a tech person, who helps from the background), inspiration, scary villain fake-out (or other variations of "creepy" character) or the actual villain. Having a character that was not only comfortable in her skin as a disabled person, who didn't want or need to be "fixed" or "cured" to be directly involved in the story, and who's main obstacle (at least in season 2) were how the people around her treated her, was pretty ground-breaking at the time (pun not intended) and went against the most prevalent stereotypes of it's day.

And I really want to emphasise that. For many Millennials and older Gen Zers, myself included, Toph was the first character that didn't tell us we were broken and needed to be fixed in order to be part of the group (even if they slipped up with that messaging occasionally). Prior to seeing Avatar, I honestly thought there was something deeply wrong with me for being happy with my life (a reminder, I was 10 years old when this show first started airing), because every other disabled person in the media only ever talked about how much worse their life was because of their disability, how much they hated it and how much they hated themselves. Many outright said that they wished they had died rather than become like me. Toph wasn't the first to go against those tropes, but she was the first example of a disabled character who wasn't like that many people my age saw. Did she do it perfectly? Hell no, but personally, back then, I was happy to have a character who maybe over-corrected and took things a bit too far than another sad character talking about how lives like mine weren't worth living.

I also deeply appreciated that Toph did struggle with her independence, at least initially, and where to draw the line with accepting help. Because of how much she'd been coddled and overprotected as a little kid, she saw any attempt at people being helpful and working as a team as them trying to baby her. It was very on the nose, but I liked that the show gave her an episode just dedicated to realising that it's ok to accept help. Again, this is a bit of a story telling trope today, but having the disabled character realise that it's ok to accept help, and to do it without talking down to them or saying that them wanting independence was bad, was a refreshing change compared to what was around at the time.

[ID: a zoomed out image of Toph, standing before her parents with Aang, Katara and Sokka standing behind her. /End ID]

While I think the show's creators could have benefited from consulting with disabled people and specifically blind people the same way they brought in consultants for the martial arts featured in the show, it's very clear to me that the intention behind Toph's character was good, and that actual effort was put in to make sure they depicted her well, even if some of it was a bit misplaced. It's also worth noting that the groundwork for a lot of my suggestions is already in place, they just didn't follow it all the way through. Overall, I'd say Toph was good for her time, and she's what was needed in the 2000's, even if she doesn't hold up as well today. I also think it speaks to how far we've come in terms of disability representation. When I first started engaging with the online fandom directly, almost no one, even other disabled people, argued that Toph wasn't good representation, because honestly, the bar was on the floor and we were just happy to have something different. But now there are options, and the standards are higher, and that's so, so good. It means that people, even in the media, are starting to listen and be more thoughtful about their depictions of disability than we were in 2006.

And finally, I want to really quickly mention The Netflix adaptation of Avatar. A few people have asked me now what I think they should do with Toph when they get to her, and what my predictions about the show are. I'm not going to talk about my predictions here, because this post is already way too long and that's not what this is about, but I don't think the suggestions I made today would necessarily work in this particular remake, primarily because of the tonal differences. Some adjustments definitely could, such the other characters doing a better job at listening to Toph when she points out inaccessibility and them actually considering her in the first place, but others might be harder to balance. The original show could get quite dark and serious at times, but it was primarily a light-hearted adventure story for kids. From what I've seen of the live action remake though, they're more heavily leaning into those serious elements - for better or for worse, and as such, trying to tone Toph down in the specific ways I mentioned might not balance out as well as it would in the original show. At the very least, the specifics would need to be different. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what approach they should take, that's not really the point of this post, but I did want to quickly address it to avoid confusion. My suggestions today were specifically on how to approach the cartoon version of Toph for a modern audience, and were not meant to be read as suggestions on how her live-action counterpart should be depicted.

[junowritings]

Hi! Can I rqs for a platonic Malleus x Fem!reader imagine please? During their NRC days,reader jokingly asked Malleus to be her maid of honour if she ever got married. Then,years later, on her wedding day, Malleus shows up,fully intending to keep his promise.

Thx!

I AM SO IN LOVE WITH THIS IDEA YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Listen this started off jokey but ended up kinda wholesome like he would be so touched??? and take it so seriously???

Also I'm thinking about the whole Fae living longer than humans but this didn't fit into the drabble so can I just say you can absolutely bet that decades/centuries after your wedding he is telling EVERYONE he meets about his fav child of man and that whole thing bc he'd think the world would be poorer off if he didn't tell everybody about his friend and the happiness they wanted him to play such an important part in.

BUT YEAH I hope you enjoy how this turned out!

=====

“If I ever get married, you’ll be my maid of honor, won’t you, Mal?”

Such a simple request, spoken so boldly from one he considered his true confidant. How could he have ever refused?

To you it was made in jest, on a quiet walk out on your dorm’s grounds as you had done for so many months now. It was easy to fill the silence with idle chatter on the nights where you found Daisomnia’s dorm leader meandering through Ramshackle’s old bones; a comforting routine that had fallen into place merely by being in the right place, at the right time. Often you would coax the odd memory from the fae of his life before Night Raven College; but Malleus was far more interested to learn of your affairs. Of friends, of family, of the many wonderful experiences crammed into such a short existence as your mortal life. 

You had become such an invaluable part of his life, it would be only natural to bask in your every word and commit it to memory, would it not? If only to ensure that not a single memory of his dear friend became lost to the flow of time that followed after you. 

So when you had turned to him, expression alight with a grin that made your eyes sparkle and the corners of your mouth crinkle with well-meant mischief, your question gave Malleus pause. 

To anyone else, your joke would have earned a playful nudge or a flat out refusal. But to Malleus, the man who you so earnestly called your friend even after everything that had transpired since your arrival? 

That small request is bound to his heart, with every intention to see it through simply because you asked. 

The days from that single night trickle into months, and then years. Faces change and friends part ways between that time, though the close bond is never lost.. A blink of an eye for your fae friend, but almost a lifetime for yourself. The moment is lost within the recesses of your fond memories, as you find a life of your own and find a love who makes your heart race and brightens the very world in their wake. Lost, but always lingering somewhere in the peripheral of your mind each time you’d looked down at your hand, now decorated with an engagement ring - a promise for the life to come.

Even as you stand now before your mirror, donned in fine fabrics of beautiful colors that makes your smile shine and your heart feel full you reminisce. It brings a chuckle to your lips, shaking your head at how easily you had joked back then about getting married, only to find yourself now doing what seemed like a distant ‘what if’ scenario just years ago. Your eyes close for a moment, your wedding attire bunched in your hands as the memory flickers briefly through your mind.

And then your eyes open, and suddenly that very memory is standing in the reflection of your mirror.

But it’s not just a reflection. You feel a hand on your shoulder and you know that it’s real as you spin around to face your old friend, face breaking out into that same telltale grin Malleus had seen such a short time ago.

“Malleus!”

The years have changed Malleus so very little, but you see it in his face. His smile is softer at the edges as he regards you with a warmness once shielded behind the result of decades of isolation. It’s a welcome sight, and you’re only pulled away when you spot the envelope in his free hand, your own writing scrawled on the cover. You recognize it immediately, and your heart swells with relief.

He’d received your invitation. He’d actually made it.

There is no hesitation as you throw your arms around the fae’s shoulders, no doubt making a mess of the pristine finery he’s wearing but too elated to care. You can’t resist a joke about how Sebek would have your hide for almost bringing the ruler of Briar Valley crashing down into the bridal suite mirror. The comment is met with a hearty chuckle from Malleus who returns your embrace eagerly, though unlike you he is careful to avoid creasing your clothes; he wouldn’t want it to impede on one of the happiest days of your life, after all.

There are so many things to catch up on. So much time to fill in on every little detail that couldn’t be expressed through letters and calls. But that will have to wait, especially as a knock at the door just moments later brings you back to the present, the wedding planner peeking their head in to ask if you and your maid of honor are ready for the ceremony. Now that gets your attention, and Malleus fails to hide the amusement that glints in his eyes watching your eyes widen, eyebrows raised in surprise as your gaze darts from the planner to your friend. 

He can see the gears turning in your head, piecing together that carefully hidden fragment that Malleus had kept close to his thoughts all of these years. And then he sees that smile again, now wobbly at the corners as your misty eyes blink back the emotions you feel welling up in your chest, and he feels pride in knowing just what his presence here on your wedding day now means to you.

Standing tall, Malleus moves to stand by your side and offers his arm. Today he is not the king of Briar valley. Today, he is your friend, confidant, and the best maid of honor you could have asked for on one of the happiest days of your life.

“Come now, I Believe I made a promise to you, child of man.” he speaks warmly as you hook your arm over his. “I hope you didn’t think I’d forget so soon.”

[vroombeams]

kinktober day 5 & 6 || sweat/scent kink, body worship || galex

(on ao3)

for @albonoooo, without whom this one would not have come about

How George gets himself worked up like this he’ll really never understand. 

He’s seen Alex shirtless about a million times. Seen him completely naked about a thousand. It should follow, then, that it shouldn’t bother him to see it at all, right? Surely so many years of full frontal exposure should’ve desensitized him at least a little.

But here he is. Here they are in this luxe, private sauna, and George is working himself into a right state about it. 

The heat looks good on Alex, is all. He looks so comfortable, so relaxed with his head tipped back. The beads of sweat at his hairline are just starting to prickle up and drip, one at a time, down his forehead. His chest is shiny with it already. This vague sheen that George thinks might be nice to run his fingers through. Draw a smiley, maybe, like window condensation.

“I’d tell you looking isn’t free,” Alex says without opening his eyes, “But even if it wasn’t I think you’d still pay for it.”

George averts his eyes instinctively. Again—years, they’ve been doing this, and he still feels like he has to look away when Alex calls him out on it. 

When he does look back, Alex’s eyes are open. He looks absolutely tickled. Bastard. 

“Not like it’s not even,” Alex says. He says it in this jokey sort of tone, but he’s also checking George out rather obviously. 

George forgets that bit, sometimes. That Alex maybe likes looking at him as much as he likes looking at Alex.

“Well,” George says, leaning over to ladle water over the sauna rocks, “I certainly don’t charge.”

It’s a silly thing to say. Absolutely laden with implications. He’d only meant it in—in the Instagram way, how he puts his whole… him out there on public display all the time, but it’s—it makes it sound so much worse when he says it like that. Bloody hell.

“No,” Alex says, amused. “No, you really don’t.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alex pull the towel from around his waist, settle it off to the bench.

“What are you doing,” George says. He’s not scandalized. Really he’s not. Just concerned, isn’t he? That Alex’ll get charged for indecent exposure. Never mind that the cabin they’re in is private, reserved just for them. Also, he’s pretty sure the Finns get naked in the sauna all the time, so.

Damn.

“My balls are sweaty,” Alex says. There’s enough of a whining edge to it that it could almost be believable. If George didn’t know him better. If George didn’t know Alex wanted him to look, look, look.

Well, fine. George looks. Why not? 

He wipes sweat from his brow as he works his way up; starts at the bony arches of Alex’s feet, the jut of his ankles. His long, shapely legs, the hair on them, the muscle under tanned skin. The space  between his thighs, where his cock hangs soft. He’s seen it before. A thousand times. Seen it in a sauna before, even, so he knows how it looks, longer and heavier with the heat. 

It pulls thrills through him like stitches. After all this time, still. Alex has this effect on him.

George huffs. He huffs and he looks away, pulls his own towel from around his hips, tosses it on the floor. There. Now they’re even.

“Well,” Alex says. 

George looks at him with as much disdain as he can muster. 

Alex is looking back, but his eyes are trailing down George’s body again. Lingering on his chest, between his pecs, gaze so sharp it feels like fingertips on his skin. George imagines he can feel it. Alex’s fingers over his stomach, dipping into his navel. Down to brush along the base of his cock, like he likes to do sometimes.

George doesn’t have the benefit of being an absolute bastard like Alex is. So he’s already halfway to hard of course.

He doesn’t even have to look to know Alex is smirking at him. 

It’s annoying, how he knows how this will go. How he starts to move before he even can think about it, crawling across the bench, watching Alex’s arm sling across it in his periphery to welcome him in. He knows what it’ll taste like when he dips to lick the sweat from Alex’s shoulder. He knows how it’ll feel, the texture, when he runs his tongue along the scar on his collarbone. He knows what it’ll sound like, when Alex murmurs, “Georgie,” like he always does. 

It’s annoying, but he also knows he can have something like the upper hand. Alex always has the upper hand. 

George steps off the bench, gets between Alex’s legs and leans over him with a hand on his shoulder. Bends to lick Alex’s chest, to swipe his tongue across a dark nipple. The taste is familiar but better, somehow. The shower before the sauna has left Alex’s sweat tasting clean and salty and satisfying.

He follows it down. Goes to his knees as he follows the imagined path Alex’s eyes had taken down his own body with his tongue until he makes it to where he wants to be most; where Alex is dark and hairy and musky. Where George can bury his face in coarse curls and rub his cheek against the thickness of Alex’s cock. He’s gotten so hard so fast that George can’t help but feel a little smug about it.

Alex touches his hair and twitches his knees outward, but George doesn’t go for his cock. He pushes his face into the crease of his thigh, where the smell is strongest, where even clean the sweat still smells and tastes so strong. The hair isn’t as thick here but the scent is so much better. George licks him clean at the joint, lets him spread his thighs all he wants. 

He goes for his balls next. Alex hadn’t been lying; they’re sweaty as all get out but still, George puts them in his mouth.

“George,” Alex groans. “George.”

George feels a bit crazed with it. Looking up at Alex, sweat dripping down his chest and his taut, flexing stomach. At his face, mouth hung open and eyes half-shut and his cheeks a bright, fevered red. 

He watches Alex’s untouched cock twitch, feels it against his brow. It’s so swollen, so hard, looks so big from this angle. Not that he’s going to tell Alex that. 

“Georgie, come on.”

George goes to Alex’s other thigh and buries his face there instead, huffing deep breaths of musky skin like he’s starved for it. Alex’s knees are shaking. He’s spread so wide open that he’s slid down the bench, slumped against the backrest, arse slippery with sweat against the polished cedar.

Impulsively, George dips lower, slipping his tongue against the space behind Alex’s balls. 

Alex swears and immediately slides down further, tucking his own balls up with a big hand to let George in. And George goes in, licking up the sweat collected between Alex’s arsecheeks, nose pressed to his taint. It’s the sort of heaven he never could’ve dreamt of. Surrounded, warm and sated, all his needs taken care of. 

Who’d have thought a bit of rimming could be Paradise?

Alex is saying his name again, and George presses the flat of his tongue against his hole, breathes and tastes and melts. It smells so good. Tastes even better. He wants to tell Alex that bit at least—how good this is for him. 

There’s a loud click, abruptly, and then a soft buzz.

Alex says, “Fuck,” and sits up, flailing one arm out for the sauna timer. Just their luck, really.

George swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He’s slick in the cheeks with his own sweat, sticky on his lips and nose. He wants to laugh. At the absurdity of it, at Alex’s absolutely stricken face.

“Better go,” George says, standing, pretending his cock isn’t swinging stiff and proud in front of him when he swipes his towel up off the floor and wraps it around his hips. It doesn’t do all that much for his modesty, really, but there’s no one around to see it.

Alex shoots him a bit of a glare. He’s sweaty and red all over. He’s got a hand wrapped around his cock, flushed purple with want. For a second George thinks he’s going to have a wank right here.

“Right,” Alex says eventually, getting his own towel situated without looking George in the eye. “Won’t do to get heatstroke.”

He gives George a bit of a slap on the arse on the way out and George bites back a grin. Feels like a promise.

[elsweetheart]

Can I request something? You see, my friends tell me that I tend to flirt without even noticing. And I've noticed I indeed do that. I look people in the eyes and then look at their lips, I lick my own lips while doing that. I also tend to say softs "hmmm" "uhuum" to show them I'm paying attention. But I don't do that with that intention, because when I WANT to flirt, I'm a mess. Can you do Ellie or Abby (you choose) having a crush/dating someone who does that?

omg !!! me !!!!!!! i love this yes yes yea

im gonna do this w ellie because there’s not much to say about abby other than she will simply just bend you over and -

good view

🎀 short drabble in a hc format ?? idk wht this is. pre-relationship ellie x reader :)

• you were kinda out of it. didn’t get much sleep, and the weather was just warm enough to wear a tank top but a breeze still passed through the abandoned building you were all currently held up in, so you were fiddling with the thin cardigan you wore, pulling them over your hands. it put you in a relaxed, sleepy, slow mood.

• you and ellie weren’t together yet, so of course at any given opportunity when she sees you sitting alone she’d make conversation. she slid a chair over to where you were sat alone at a small table, straddling it backwards resting her arms on the back of the chair.

• “did you call dibs on a room? there’s not much choice, i mean they’re all pretty shitty.” she smirked light heartedly as you turned to face her.

• “yeah, picked the one with the good view.” you smiled hazily having being broken from your thoughts and your sleepy daydreams. you were blinking slowly, ellie always thought your eyelashes looked extra pretty when you did that.

• “nice, my window faces a brick wall.” she comment with an eye roll and you giggled which made her features noticeably perk up when she saw the way your teeth sunk into your bottom lip mid giggle to stifle it. she tried not to stare, launching into a story about the time her and Joel passed through a fancy abandoned building and she called dibs on the fancy penthouse bedroom and made Joel sleep in the maid quarters.

• you were listening intently, at first, but you were tired and her features were just so distracting. not even because of your huge crush on her, she just was… interesting. your eyes dragged down to her bottom lip where she had acquired a fresh cut from some kind of scuffle she’d wound up in and watched the way it moved with her mouth as she spoke. “mhm.” you breathed lightly to let her know you were still sort of listening.

• she felt her heart in her throat as she watched your fluttery eyes stare at her lips and completely stumbled over what she was going to say. “it was funny because he was— um… it was funny because fucking—uh…” she lost track of what she was trying to say and this caused you to casually glance back up at her eyes, furrowing your eyebrows slightly in confusion making them look extra big and doe like which did not her help case.

• “wh’s wrong?” you spoke so softly she could barely hear it over the blood thumping in her ears when she realised she was blushing. what made it worse, is she watched you in real time notice her blushing too, your pretty eyes gliding across her face. “c’mon dude.” she laughed, sitting back away from where she was leaning on the chair to wipe her hands down her face.

• “i’m so confused.” you giggled back and she chuckled, fiddling with the chipped wooden table corner for a moment before looking back up at you with a little more determination.

• “can i finish my story please? without you eyeballing me like that?” her tone was jokey, slightly putting on a voice but you could tell she meant it. you sat back a little, tilting your head to the side like a confused puppy. “and like that.” she laughed before flickering her own eyes to your mouth. “s’distracting.” was all she needed to say and you sort of caught on and raised your eyebrows a little.

• “oh…” you willed her to speak more with her stare, so she did. “you’re pretty. drives me crazy, just a little bit.” she scrunched her nose and you smiled, letting it drop slightly as you held her stare. she cleared her throat, feeling overwhelmed. “anyway, as i was saying before you rudely interrupted with your face.” she continued which made you laugh. perhaps you needed to be more mindful about how you looked at people, however you did enjoy teasing ellie.

[thecoolerliauditore]

I can't believe Mumbo had that conversation with Pearl with 0 knowledge of Double Life. That's the funniest coincidence ever

IT IS CRAZY. Their conversation was actually kind of driving me up a wall with the. Insane, sorry. The symbolism of it all.

At the very start, Scott offers to let Pearl kill him, which is an action he has repeated many times with many different people.

--> One of the first things Mumbo says to Pearl is "another tower?", he's referring to the only tower he's seen Pearl build, the funny phallic one in SL, and this is meant to be a lighthearted opening on his part. But we as the audience, and I'd argue Pearl as well, remember a different tower Pearl built much more deeply. And Mumbo pointing out this symbol of loneliness that's been repeatly shown in Pearls storyline, despite her supposedly having friends, is kind of awesome to me.

And this one I think is much more. Dumb but.

Last episode, there was a really cute moment where Pearl makes a joke about farming enderpearls, and Scott says "but we already have the best Pearl"

--> Near the end of their conversation, Mumbo shows Pearl an enderpearl he has, to which she says "you've got me in your hand!" in this jokey tone.

And it's cute and obviously repeating the same pun but like. Pearl says the pearl Is her, or the same as her, with no implication of superiority (she could've very easily spun it into "but I'm already the best Pearl!" if she wanted to echo what Scott said more)

This, to me. <-- insane. Acts as a quiet implication of Pearl rejecting the special pedastal Scott places her on. She is not special, she is not the best Pearl, she is just A Pearl.

And "you've got me in your hand" is literal of course, but it could also be seen as a symbolic way to say "I'm yours" or "I'm on your side" or "I trust you", which I think is especially cool since that is what she implies but never says outright through this whole conversation.

Mumbo of course being the Mounder who betrayed his team last season makes this all the more poignant to me, alongside the other two one on one interactions she has with her other Mounders.

I'm so sorry I'm like this. I love Mumbo Jumbo. I loved this episode alot

[roll-for-gaslight]

I'm not sure exactly how to put my thoughts into words so pardon my rambling but I'm thinking about how Kristen, Adaine, and Fig's character growth all stems from growing into a person they always could have been in a better situation. Also, it's interesting the way the bad kids seem to bring out these parts of each other because they're healing!

Like I know it was a kind of jokey moment but Adaine's little "Fabian hit me!!!!!" versus her insistence on being independent to the point of endangering her mental and physical wellbeing! She grew up so independent, unable to ask for help because of the risk of being ridiculed. She never asks for help and holds herself to an incredibly high standard. But that's not how her childhood should have ideally gone! She was supposed to have a big sister to tattle on and fight with, she was supposed to be taken care of! The BKs make her feel safe and cared for in a way her family never did, so her character development very much means slipping into the "little sister" position she was always supposed to occupy.

Fig pushed down her natural and newly-forming personality when the very foundation of her identity changed. She threw herself so wholly and entirely into her new aesthetic and vibe and vehemently denied the version of her that came before. Now she's growing to accept herself at all stages of her life, to a version of herself that brings in the parts of both her childhood and post-tiefling personalities that she likes and forms something new that makes her comfortable.

For Kristen, losing her religion made her lose a sense of identity. Without her parents to take care of her or her brothers for her to take care of, she was suddenly accountable to absolutely no one. She has Jawbone and Sandralynn, technically, but from what we've seen neither of them actually parent her a lot. So, she leaned hard into doing whatever she wanted, living wildly, engaging in all the things she never got to before, living a life as far away from her childhood as possible, and that's reflected in her clerical work. She loves Cassandra and wants her to thrive, but hates that what that means has a lot of overlap with what it meant to be Helio's Chosen. Like the daily prayer, the proselytizing, it reminds her too much of the things she was raised to do for Helio, and the fact that Cassandra needs Kristen to take care of her makes her accountable to someone in a way that she really wasn't for a while. Now that she's in the back half of her character arc, trying to bring Cassandra back and working hard for it, she's growing a little more responsible. There have been a lot of good moments this season where she's tried to help other people outside of combat-necessary healing, such as giving Lydia Barkrock the help action and the way she reacts after Fabian attacks Adaine (which I know is technically "combat-necessary healing" but how it happened came across as very Big Sister, like pulling the crayon out of her brother's nose in the first episode, especially with how it was immediately followed not with a bit like everyone else but with "oh no fabian got possessed I hope he's okay!!!! poor fabian!!!!!"

[capnsaltsquid]

This moment had kind of a jokey feel to it, but I think it's worth considering how badly rattled V must have been by the events of this episode:

>> Learning that both Uzi and Doll were infected by the Solver. Despite the lie she told Uzi earlier, she knew exactly what that symbol meant. She was terrified; you could see it in the way she froze up during the fight and her expression when she aimed her rocket arm at Uzi when she used the solver to stop Doll's bullet. This was her worst nightmare come true.

>> Seeing Uzi stand up for her against Doll. Watch her face when Uzi is speaking to Doll; she's shocked that a worker would protect her, and she looks genuinely moved when Uzi talks about working together. This was the moment when she started to soften her attitude toward Uzi, though it would take her awhile to come around fully.

>> Lizzie's betrayal / change of heart. Yes, V was ostensibly using Lizzie to get in and kill a bunch of workers, but I'll bet she also genuinely enjoyed hanging out together. Life in the spire had to be lonely as hell, and having a friend apart from N probably felt good. It had to sting, realizing that Lizzie had betrayed her. But at the same time, Lizzie could have run for it or stayed hidden after Doll yeeted her into the bleachers, but she risked Doll's wrath to come back and try to help V while the fight was still ongoing. That had to shake V's world a bit.

So yeah, when she said "I'm not doing okay", she wasn't kidding.

[proseka-headcanons]

transmasc rui: an essay (/silly) by mod mizuki

made on june 7 2024. scheduled for (if i'm correct) exactly june 24 2024 12am JST in honor of rui's birthday

so. i talk a lot about transmasc rui. but i've never explained the headcanon. that is what i am here to do today because i've been meaning to make this post since *checks notes* ... april. oh wow and i only did this while half asleep on june 7... and then scheduled it for rui's birthday.... oh dear. well anyways. a lot of this is kinda jokey. in fact the first point is the only 100% serious one i think. but without further ado, here's why rui kamishiro is transmasc!

1. rui's connection to the cat plush in the wonderland sekai

this is a BIG one. it's pretty clear, isn't it? the cat plush is VERY obviously meant to mirror rui. the worry of being seen as weird and being ostracized for sharing his ideas? yeah. that's obviously rui. however, with this comes some trans coding. why? the cat plush is a calico. if you don't know, male calico cats are RIDICULOUSLY rare, and almost always sterile. a common statistic is that only 1/3,000 calicos are male, but it's unclear if that's the real statistic. either way, male calicos are so rare that when one is born, discovered, or adopted, there are news articles made about it. a big example being charlie unicorn (as he was nicknamed), a cat from colorado discovered in april of 2023 to be male and adopted in june of the same year.

^ that's charlie

male calico cats (as well as male tortoiseshell cats) are known as the unicorn of cats because they're just that rare. so rui (a canon male) being so closely tied to the calico plush... yeah seems like trans coding to me, accidental or not.

2. this fucking card

that's it. yeah. that card.

look his earring is trans flag colors okay. also. the costume. it's called fucking transition gentleman there's literally nothing more to say here moving on

3. his friendship with mizuki

i like getting opportunities to talk about them. so mizuki and rui are friends we all know this. and they bonded over being outcasts. but what if. they also had something else in common. transness or something idk. transfem transmasc solidarity is a thing and it's cool. if two trans people know they're both trans they're likely to get along well. they can feel safe because the other won't judge them for who they are. ... a lot of the time.

maybe he's an outcast for being autistic and a trans boy. you can't tell me otherwise. also them both being trans makes the dynamic so much better in my personal opinion :3

4. holy shit!!! a binder!!!

if you look closely, the thing he's wearing underneath the white shirt... has no sleeves. it has like. straps. it could easily be a tank top but it could also just as easily be a binder. i choose to believe it IS a binder. you can't tell me otherwise

i might be forgetting things, but i'm tired. i'm eepy. so thank you for coming to my ted talk. mod mizuki out.

[quadrantadvisor]

Yknow the shitty marvel movie type trope of diffusing all of your emotional scenes with humor? Homestuck does the same thing but with a RADICALLY different vibe. Like exactly the opposite.

Most modern media that does this is trying to distance the author from the text, by inviting the audience to laugh with the author. Oh, isn't this story silly, we're self aware, no need to immerse yourself. It's got this smug yet self depreciating tone, because it feels like the author wants you to like them more than their story.

Whereas when Homestuck does this it is self aggrandising, because it's meant as an explicit ATTACK on the audience. It is a purposeful attempt to draw the reader in and then pull out the rug from under them. It's not meant to break the tension, it's to give you mood whiplash. It shows a certain amount of confidence in the text, because the author truly believes in the text's ability to emotionally affect the audience so that this trick works.

I can definitely empathize with someone who finds this aggravating (that's sort of the point), but to me it's legitimately preferable to the self-aware jokey jokey thing because I don't think it diminishes the impact of the story itself. The narrative still exists as is, with all of its devastating events, and the jokes are a way of twisting that knife in a little bit further.

I would honestly go as far as to say that many of these style of jokes don't lighten the mood at all, but just add an extra element of poignancy or horror to a scene. Something ridiculous happening to the body of a recently deceased character isn't exactly light material, for one example. For another, more specific one, consider Dave's "acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle".

As a quick refresher, Dave says early on in the story that, rather than flying off the handle, he will do an "acrobatic fucking pirouette". This wording becomes a frequent callback joke from that point on. And then, much later, Dave finds the impaled corpse of the older brother who raised him, and decides on a symbolic gesture he'd like to make. He can't pull the sword out of his brother's chest, because he doesn't feel like he's worthy. He has to make a "clean break", by breaking off the end of the sword to take with him. But it doesn't work, and in the attempt he's flung backwards. And then he's just laying there, on the ground, while his friend points out that he has finally, literally performed his acrobatic pirouette off the handle.

And yeah, that's funny, but to me it's also absolutely devastating? This is a character who's recently been dealing with extreme self worth issues and a crisis of free will, who's clumsily trying to grieve for the very person who caused a lot of those issues in the first place. It makes the entire thing feel weirdly inevitable and that much more horrible for it, like, of course this would happen, his whole LIFE has been a joke to begin with. It doesn't detract from the moment. It invites you, the audience, to sit in that moment with the character and just kind of let it wash over you.

At least that's how I feel about it!

[fipindustries]

Ditko's legacy

a really interesting thing i noticed about steve ditko is that not only he was a prolific creator of iconic comic book characters. but the pattern that his characters follow to fame is particularly odd and it tends to repeat itself.

let's start with the most iconic of all, mist aracnid human himself

an interesting thing is that ditko only drew spiderman until issue 38, afterwards the art was taken over by john romita sr.

in many ways romita's version of spiderman is the definitive interpretation. whereas under ditko peter was actually kind of an immature, prepotent jerk, under romita he became a lot softer and classically heroic. romita is also the guy who designed mary jane watson, it was under his tenure that the green goblin's identity as norman osborn was revealed. in many ways john romita's work was was finally turned spiderman into marvel's mascot.

so neat, right, what else did steve ditko do. well, he created another iconic character for marvel. a very Strange Doctor indeed

for this guy i dont have as much history but i think it would be fair that he was relatively an obscure character, someone you were not familiar with unless you were really into superhero comics... until 2016

when he was interpreted by superstar tumblr sexyman extraordinaire benedicto cumberbacho. thanks to that and his role in the avenger's endgame movie now the guy is a bit of an icon and a respectable IP on his own right.

but we can go even more obscure than that, let's check another character created by ditko, a character so obscure that is literally incognito

created in 1967 by ditko for a now defunct company called charlston comics. his original appearance was actually incredibly short lived. so much so that he was cancelled that very same year he was created.

but then, in 1987, dennis O'neil decided that he was interested in that character and so we got

in here the character was radically changed from a staunch objectivist into more of a zen buddhist philosopher. in many ways o'neils run is the best run the question ever had and the version that tends to be the heavier inspiration for all other subsequent adaptations.

but actually how about we go even more obscure than that, how about we go to a shady guy driven to madness...

once again, ditko made, in 1977 for DC, a strange man from another dimension whom, with the help of his stolen M-vest he could transform into a huge difigured version of himself. as ditko was wont to do, his stories were very surrealistic and psychodelic. as is often the case his work was cancelled after only 8 issues. forgotten by time until, courtesy of the british invasions of the 80's/90's on the comic scene, we got

a story that became far more explicitly political, a crude, surrealist examination of the american culture, touching on topics such as alcholism, the hippie movement, gender theory and abortion. an absolute masterpiece if you want my opinion and probably one of the best comics ever made. once again all other successive adaptation we got of the character tend to borrow a lot more from this version than from the original.

ok one final stop in this ride of ditko creations. who else is left you may wonder, is there something this guy has not created? well, you see ditko could be a heady philosophical creator but he was not above being a little silly from time to time, and that is how he ended up coming up with

yes you heard that right, squirell girl!

ok to be fair, this one was not created by ditko, he was just the artist. the actual creator is will murray, but bear with me here.

created for a superhero special in 1991 as a fun jokey character, she was never really meant to have her own book or series or anything like that.

after being introduced she kept appearing her and there and with every new appearence the gag that she could beat any character started to get built up more and more, beating dr doom, thanos, eternity and god knows who else until finally, in 2014, she actually got her own run written by none other than the creator of dinosaur comic Ryan North

not going to lie, i personally always thought the art was really bad, but it became a fairly popular book, getting high praise from most critics and even winning an eisner award in 2017

conclussion

i think it's absolutely fascinating that ditko has this pattern of creating incredibly iconic characters who become popular and known by a later adaptation by another artist who takes the character on a whole new direction. he seems to be really good a seeding ideas and establishng concepts but there are fertile grounds in the hands of other artists.

if there is one character that has survived this process is his strong, stalwart, objectivist hero who thinks in incredibly rigid, unbreakable rules about good and evil, up and down, black or white.

mr A

and why is that? well, its very simple, the ancient greek philosophers already established this millenia ago. everythng that exsts has a specific nature, each entity exists as something in particular and has characteristics and has characteristics of what it is.

A is A.

[dunmeshistash]

On the note of the last ask i don't actually think it's that strange to have a strong interest in the pronouns used in japanese, as, in japanese fandoms in general, there is actually a big fixation with what pronouns characters use for themselves (and when), not primarily due to gender, but moreso personality implications.

For example, thistle's use of 私(watashi) implying when he uses 僕(boku) (such as around those he considers family) that is how he refers to himself casually. This is interesting, since most male characters (and men in general) use 俺(ore) as their casual pronoun. In a lot of cases, a male character using 僕 casually reads as childish. (though there are exceptions, and it is less so when used by tomboyish women, though that isn't really relevant.)

I haven't finished rereading dungeon meshi in japanese, so i don't know all of the character's personal pronouns, but it is definitely an interesting topic. (i also haven't backread what's been posted on this fully so a lot of this might have already been said)

Anonymous asked: Forgot to mention in my previous ask, Thistle uses both 私 AND 僕, i checked some of the chapters in the thistle arc to see how he referred to himself, and he used 私 when speaking to laios, and 僕 with the royal family and in his own thoughts.

Oh I love that! Thank you!

I assumed they meant "Why are you obsessing over pronouns in japanese to guess gender presentation" idk

The last part where they mentioned speech pattern tells more makes sense but I wouldn't imagine something that jokey on dunmeshi, even elf Senshi still acted not too exaggerated.

I enjoy the personality implications like you mentioned. I like to get as much insight into characters I like as I can. Ofc this is only because these are characters and choices like self pronouns are part of the way authors indicate things about characters usually, it's not how it works irl, I remember seeing a chart once about 1st person pronoun use percentages and it changed a lot based on where they where and who they were talking to. (like the same people changed between watashi ore and boku depending)

Anyway Thistle is so cute.