#what of it?

[five-of-cr]

[orionsangel86]

Hob Gadling - A Queer Romantic?

I have been listening to The World's End chapters of The Sandman on Audible lately and just finished Hob's Leviathan. I didn't pay this story much attention when I first read the comic, as I tended to read through the stories quickly and put more focus into the stories where Dream had a larger role. But one of the reasons I like listening to the Audible book is because it allows me to absorb each story more thoroughly and take my time thinking about each one and the (usually multiple) meanings behind them.

Hob Gadling is a character that fandom has fallen in love with. I think this is clear to anyone that takes even a partial glance at Sandman fandom. This isn't a criticism - Ferdie's performance as Hob in the Netflix show has done wonders for Hob's character. He has made his version of Hob very easy to fall in love with!

But the truth is that in The Sandman comics, Hob is a minor character who we only get to know very little about. The story Hob's Leviathan appears in The Worlds End Sandman book. We only meet him twice before this, once in The Doll's House, where we are introduced to him in Men of Good Fortune, and again in Season of Mists when Dream comes to let him know that he may miss their next meeting. In both these issues, Hob is introduced via the narrator, and therefore I like to think that we are given a fairly honest representation of the kind of person he is. We watch him grow and learn throughout the centuries in MoGF, but one of the major takeaways from this I believe is that he tends to always be on the wrong side of history. He makes bad choices and can be a bit narrow minded. He is rude and selfish and also rather self-absorbed. I actually think that the performance of the voice actor who plays Hob in the Audible book emphasises these character flaws making him even more unlikeable in many ways, though I am aware that this could just be my own experience and opinion.

But Hob's Leviathan takes a different view of Hob. Literally. The narrator of this story is a young boy of 16 called Jim. Jim met Hob on a ship travelling from Bombay to Liverpool in 1914. Jim was working on the ship as a cabin boy and Hob had bought his passage back to England - though it is revealled at the end of the story that Hob actually owned the ship they were travelling on. It is clear that at this point in time, Hob is extremely wealthy.

Jim attends to Hob throughout the journey, and grows very fond of him. In Jim's tale, Hob is a good man, who is kind and thoughtful and cares about others. He saves the life of a stowaway (who turns out to be another immortal). He is shown to be patient, and funny, and very intelligent. Jim waxes poetic about how smart Hob is, and how much he impressed him. It is particularly clear in the Audible book that Jim is taken with Hob, to the point that it could arguably be a crush.

It is fascinating how much more likeable Hob is when narrated from the viewpoint of someone with a crush on him, whether this story is exaggerated through rose tinted glasses is of course something to consider. All the tales in World's End are just that, tales. There is a constant undercurrent of exaggeration and make believe to them where even the other patrons of the inn question elements to each of the stories. We are not supposed to take these stories as absolute fact, rather they are supposed to reveal to us more about the narrators as well as their own experiences existing in this magical and strange world.

When it is revealled that Jim is actually a girl called Peggy in disguise so they can get work on the ships, the quite obvious crush makes more sense to a heteronormative audience, but what I particularly like about this story is its queer potential. See in the comic, it isn't really clarified if Jim goes by Jim because they feel more themselves as a boy, rather than a girl, or if they are disguising themself as a boy just to get work as a means to an end. I would argue that the latter is the more obvious interpretation. Jim tells the other World's End patrons that they are getting too old to keep up the disguise and will eventually have to stop working in shipping, and that when that happens, they will take on a new name, a new identity and do something else, but that for now, the patrons can keep calling them Jim.

*for a lack of clarity around the point in the comic, I am going to use gender neutral pronouns for Jim going forward*

Now from Hob's POV, he figured out that Jim was a girl, and they talk about it briefly along with the sea serpent they saw. I think that at this point, Hob is impressively progressive compared to the previous times we have met him. Now whether or not this is biased storytelling from someone who has a crush on him remains to be seen, but if we take Jim's word as truth, not only is 1914 Hob a fair and honest man who is willing to pay the way of a stowaway and fully respect the secrets of a young girl disguised as a boy so they can work on ships, but he's also totally comfortable flirting with them.

I like that he calls Jim the "handsome cabin boy". I like that this version of Hob, whether real or an exaggeration skewed by Jim's feelings for him, respects Jim's identity. Jim may be a girl in disguise, but Hob doesnt call her pretty, he calls him handsome.

It's all just a bit subtly queer and I like that for Hob (But then I would do, I'm a Dreamling shipper HA)

When Jim finishes their story, they state that they didn't see Hob again after that, but the comics later do give us a possible outcome to Jim's story...

We next see Hob in The Kindly Ones where he is mourning the death of his girlfriend Audrey. He briefly reveals that Audrey was the first person he had loved since Peggy, who was his lover until her death during the Blitz. Whilst it isn't made clear that Hob's lover Peggy is the same Jim that we meet in World's End, it is a bit too much of a coincidence. The timing adds up. If Jim was 16 in 1914, they'd be in their early 40s during the Blitz. Hob remains forever in his early 30s so I'd say its a safe bet that Jim eventually found Hob again and they were together. Hob loved them enough that he wasn't with anyone again until Audrey in the 80s. That's 50 years worth of mourning. A long time not to be with anyone, even for an immortal.

It's funny because we know so little about Hob, but one thing that I have seen commented on here a lot is that comic Hob is deemed to be as Straight as an arrow. Now I admit that the voice actor in the Audible book plays him very straight, but that is still only one interpretation.

All this is to say that I am fascinated with how the Netflix show will adapt this, since Hob in the show already comes across much kinder and more selfless than his comic counterpart. He already has an entire fandom viewing him as queer, and the comics certainly don't outright shut down such interpretations. There are moments in the comics that you have to wonder on. He does call Jim handsome rather than pretty, and when he talks to Audrey's grave he mentions his wives and loves as separate groups. He talks about finding it easy to get sex if you want it, and he talks about it in generally gender neutral terms. In Sunday Mourning Gwen reveals that she thought he was gay when she first met him, though her reasonings were that he knew so many dead people (a dark reminder that these comics were published at the height of the Aids epidemic). He reacts very badly to the news of Morpheus' death. He states on several occassions just how much he liked Morpheus, and he is one of the few people to wake up from the Wake with tears running down his cheeks. I would arguably state that its between Hob and Matthew as to who had the worst reaction to Morpheus' death, showing just how much both Hob and Matthew cared about him, and placing Hob on par with Matthew in the comics is a big deal. He seriously considers accepting Death's gift when she offers it, simply because Morpheus is dead. He doesn't, because at the end of the day, its just not in his nature to do so, and given he then dreams of Morpheus, I like to think that it was a test, that he passed.

When it comes to how the show will adapt all this, I genuinely think it will take a new approach with Jim/Peggy. I think they will be either a trans man, or at least non binary. But I think having Jim be a trans man is the better option. In the comics, Jim's tale is only very subtly queer, Jim clearly likes being Jim, but it seems like its a means to an end, a convenience in order to get work on the ships, rather than being something that is core to Jim's feelings on their gender. Besides, if we assume that Jim is indeed the Peggy Hob talks about in The Kindly Ones, then we know that Jim goes back to being Peggy when they get older and apparently continues living as a woman whilst they are with Hob, otherwise I doubt Hob would have referred to one of his greatest loves by a name they themselves rejected and only used she/her pronouns when talking about them. Nevertheless there is no reason for the show to take this approach, and if they DO decide that Jim should be a trans man, then their relationship with Hob is canonically a queer one. Trans men are men and if one of Hob's greatest loves is a trans man, then Hob is a queer man himself. I genuinely believe the show will take this route and I can't wait to see it.

Going back to my point about narrators bias, if MoGF, SoM, tKO, and TW are all narrated by a neutral third party, then this must be the true Hob. A not overly likeable rather selfish man. He has his good points, and he has certainly grown and changed over the centuries, and carries a lot of guilt for his past mistakes, but he is still quite self absorbed. Jim paints a picture of a rose tinted Hob that is far more the dreamy romantic older gentleman that took a young person under his wing. Which is fair enough.

The show is of course its own adaptation, with changes from the comics as it sees fit, but I do feel it's my duty to remind you that the show also has a narrator guiding the audience through its many stories. Dream of the Endless, Lord Morpheus, King of Nightmares and Prince of Stories himself. Take from that whatever you will.

;-)

[balladofthe101st]

fellas, what does it mean when someone grabs you by the collar of your class a paratrooper uniform, comes close to your face, stares at your eyes, and asks you for a drink?

[imagine-darksiders]

Been thinking about sheep dad lately...

[themosticonicseveredhead]

average sapphic after watching Love Lies Bleeding:

[itischeese]

Give me Kakashi as a victim of teenage burnout, give me Kakashi whose perfectionism was so strong that when he got out of ANBU he just broke without its restrictions to hold him to together. Give me a Kakashi who will never be good enough for himself, and who knows it.

Give me a Kakashi who looks at Obito and sees someone good, someone better than he will ever be, and who hurts. Give me a Kakashi who loves Obito more than he can contain and enough that he will never tell him. Give me a Kakashi who wants better for Obito, who thinks he doesn’t deserve him and wishes he did, who wants Obito and hates himself for it, because how can he want Obito when he’s so broken and Obito’s so good?

(Give me an Obito who doesn’t care. Give me an Obito who loves Kakashi anyway, who looks at Kakashi and sees someone good.)

[idontevenremember5minutesago]

[thedupshadove]

I'm not saying this would be a good idea, but I do think you could make one of those blown-up, slightly-adultified, lots-of-added-lore adaptations of the Phantom Tollbooth without it seeming completely insane.

[clockwayswrites]

Danny/Jason, Red, Bonsai

@justwannabecat

“Again.”

“Hands up higher, again.”

“Elbows tighter to your body, again.”

“Balance your weight! Again.”

“Stay focused, again.”

“Eyes on the target, again!”

“Again.”

“Again.”

“Again.”

Danny dropped to the mat as soon as he was allowed to, chest heaving from exertion. Sweat dripped down his neck in an aggravating itch, but he didn’t have the energy to raise his hands to scratch at it. His arms felt like dead weight. He was just going to lay there on the floor for awhile. Maybe a few days.

Out of nowhere his right hand was lifted up and Danny groaned.

“I’m just undoing your wraps and putting on some salve,” Jason said. His touch was gentle as he removed the tape. “You did good today.”

“Didn’t seem like it from where I was standing,” Danny rasped. Fuck, even his throat hurt.

“You did. You have a lot to learn but you’re picking it up well.”

“Even my hair hurts.”

Jason chuckled before pressing a feathery kiss to Danny’s knuckles. “You’re like a bonsai.”

Danny cracked an eye open to glare dubiously at his boyfriend. “Because my hair hurts?”

“Because you need to be molded, and sometimes that hurts. When a gardener is working with a young tree, they will twist it into place and wrap it with wire so that it stays. They’re not gentle with it. They’ll even pierce the branch to make it bend more or split it. The tree is wounded in the process.” Jason carefully rubbed in the salve to the split knuckles. “But when the training is done and the gardener takes off the wire, it is no longer just a tree, it’s now a bonsai. It’s been shaped into something more than it was before. That’s what we’re doing with you.”

Jason set Danny’s right hand down and straddled him, settling lightly on Danny’s hips as he picked up the left hand for the same treatment.

Danny watched the other work. “What dark youtube rabbit hole did you go down to know that much about bonsai?”

Jason barked out a laugh before he leaned down to kiss Danny in a way that would Danny’s toes curl if he had the energy left to move.

Maybe he could live with being Jason’s bonsai.

Did some prompts, here is the masterpost.

[sashathegreyhound]

You complain that people overdramatise your life but you sign your letters with "yours ever" whilst promising your "total loyalty" to the person who happily let you lose your job for them.

"perhaps he was just stringing me along"

I hate to break this to you but I think perhaps you might already be quite dramatic.

[megamanofnumbers]

I am [X] days old when I realized "Daifuku" doesn't mean "Radish" but refers to a Japanese confectionary that also means "Great Luck". I'm a fucking moron.

My boi Satoru didn't name his rabbit after a goddamn plant. He named him after a sweet that double references the fiction of the "Lucky Rabbit".

Which means that, if Satoru and Daifuku are indeed the midseason Cures, then the latter would definitely be called something to the effect of "Cure Lucky". Which would be a fucking awesome name btw.

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

June: screw it!!! im going to savor every moment!!! im going to appreciate the trees!! im going to live!!!

[hippolotamus]

OK usually I’m not here for immediate post episode analysis but @bidisasterevankinard asked and I’m powerless against that I said yes.

In 7x05 You Don’t Know Me we have a fraught Buck, who has made some absolutely terrible word vomity decisions on his date with Tommy. His secondary concern? Lying to his Best Friend. Maybe they discussed this part off screen (as many things are implied to be in this show) but Eddie presumably doesn’t know that that’s what was eating Buck alive. That he lied.

NOW in 7x07 Ghost of a Second Chance we have Eddie. Eddie who uses Buck as part of his own (very premeditated) lie. Because he obviously can’t ask Marisol to watch Chris. (Meaning he also doesn’t have to add anyone else to the lie by telling her he’s hanging with a friend or has a shift. So we’ll give him that one small, microscopic fragment of recognition.)

Eddie doesn’t ask Buck to lie outright, but Buck thinks Eddie’s going on a date with Marisol. Y’know, his girlfriend. What else is Eddie supposed to say?

This will be one of the few (only?) times we’ll see Eddie needing Buck’s forgiveness. Because how could Buck not be furious to be used like that? That’s his partner. His bestie. His ride or die. The person who said there’s nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you. The person Eddie has been the most vulnerable with.

Can’t imagine that’s gonna go well for anyone.

[catcherwrites]

TDP S7E1 Rewatch (feat. my commentary)

Astrid and Kosmo were great in S6 so it was cool to see them again in S7

I love how Astrid’s wings fluffed out when she got emotional

“They will fall hard” was an interesting line that didn’t end up going quite where I thought it would, but maybe that’s an Arc 3 thing

Hi Ethariiii love the new look <3

Runaan’s lotus was alone in the pool, which means they removed Rayla’s lotus after S3E3. When do we think they did that? Did they destroy it or does Ethari keep her flower somewhere special as a reminder?

Is it just me or is Runaan’s animation a little stilted in this scene? It clashes at times with his VA’s performance (Allen’s also legit just an NPC here)

I liked Rayla helping Callum with his staff, it was a cute interaction overall

The way Aaravos defined the In Between made me think Leola was trapped there and he was looking to find a way to free her

“It’s time to grieve” Terry doing the forehead touch was so sweet

Oh boy time for my favourite sequence of the episode

Owww Jack and Jesse did so wonderfully it breaks my heart every time I see it

“Babe” TERRY

Sorvus reunion my beloved <3

Broyals reunion my beloved </3

“I never promised” Astrid is a queen I will not hear anything else of it

Oooo the Dutch tilt on Ezran saying “King of ashes?” to represent his turmoil

Ezran always looked so awkward on his throne, I choose to think it’s because he hasn’t grown into his title yet. Personal headcanon is that he’ll be much more comfortable sitting on his throne in Arc 3

Aaravos is so fruity I love it

And so is Corvus I love how casual he’s gotten with everyone since joining the Crownguard

“Such a kind young man” saying that like Corvus didn’t also help Aara-faux-s

WHAT WAS THE APPLE FORRRR

Zym snapping at Aegis was cute

Soren not having a sleeping bag says a lot about him as a character I think

Also is this the first Soren/Rayla hug? I think it might be!

I expected a bigger reaction between Soren and Runaan considering they fought (a gloves off, no holding back, trying to kill each other kind of fight)

Ezran’s voice cracking on “this is all your fault!” ughhh. Sasha did amazingly in this scene

“Take a breath” callback to Ezran trying to talk down Rex Igneous????

The painted sky during the Star Scraper scene is gorgeous

“I’m going to Katolis” but then… she doesn’t? She goes to the Silvergrove? Idk just a scripting mistake I assume. Either Astrid took so long finding them because she stopped in Katolis first and then tracked Rayllum down or Kosmo told her “nah you’ll find them in the Silvergrove” offscreen

Overall thoughts:

This episode was pretty good for a season premiere, a solid 8/10 in my opinion. The highlights were definitely in the character dynamics and everyone playing off each other. I do think that a rewatch opens the season up to some holes/flaws in the larger story that could’ve been fixed if this episode had been cleaner. The animation was also a little wonky at times too, even if the backgrounds were pretty.

[bionicle-ramblings]

Got thinking about the Mangai, more specifically Lhikan and Naho

One night, Lhikan is lying awake in bed, trying to sleep, counting and recounting the stones or metal panels making up the ceiling of his home, and ultimately just gets up and starts designing weapons, as it was something he'd done as a Matoran and was good enough at he could make weapons pretty easily

Also awake is Naho, who couldn't sleep either and came to check on him. She's not surprised he's up designing weapons again, but does wish he'd actually do something that led to him resting rather than making him more awake(crafter's high/ you start a project and can't stop until it's done). Lhikan thinks nothing of it; drafting out and designing weapons on paper is the boring part and actually knocks him out

Naho watches him sketch out designs over his shoulder, long enough that Lhikan asks her if she's having fun. She jokes she isn't and admits she feels sorry for him because he's hunched over and designing weapons in the middle of the night while she hogs his bed, which she demonstrates by laying on his bed and even laying on her stomach and kicking her feet

It's cheeky, but after a little more talking, Naho convinces Lhikan to at least lay down, as he's actually exhausting himself. The two lay next to each other, something that brings them back to when they were Matoran, and essentially shows them how much has changed, but also how little has changed. Naho admits she's surprised Lhikan's still designing weapons, knowing how long it's been since his Matoran days

Lhikan admits it's just a small part of home that he held on to. And it helps to have versatile weapons, which he knows as he has his swords. Naho agrees, but it's happy with her weapon, but mostly because she likes how grounding it is for her

After a bit more talking, the two manage to sleep

No, I don't ship them, why do you ask? Love isn't canon, they're just really good friends, guys, they're not in love and haven't admitted it and then ultimately die having never expressed they're true feelings, nope. Not at all🥲