#which is understandably upsetting

[gay-otlc]

Say it with me: The fact that closeted and non-passing trans men face misogyny for being perceived as women does not mean that closeted and non-passing trans women have male privilege!

[kristoffs-lullaby]

Jealousy, Jealousy

[millionsghosts]

I think a lot about how Vash and Knives are perceived and how they actually are. Vash is the one who pushes his feelings back and holds himself together constantly in order to keep pushing forwards, despite how open/silly he seems on the surface. Knives comes across as colder and more logical, but his decisions and conclusions are all driven by his rage and fear and emotions.

Knives makes himself out to be the reasonable one who knows more about the world than Vash (at least in Tristamp), but Vash is actually the one out there experiencing things and learning about life and humanity, meaning he's probably much wiser. This specifically is one of my favorite things about Trigun because it's just so hopeful. Vash is the one who sees the world and everything it has to offer (he was running all over the place for 150 years, dude!), and he's also the one who believes so resolutely that humans are good. I think that's absolutely beautiful.

[iztea]

i think one of my biggest pet peeves is when you're trying to explain or delve deeper into a topic that's *a bit* more complex or challenging with someone and they immediately cut you off and resort to making jokes about their head hurting or dumbing it down to a cartoonish level for,,, comedic effect i guess

[dollypopup]

one day fans will realize that treating real people like fictional characters and fictional characters like real people is, at the core of things, The Problem

[coffeebanana]

something something necromancer Marinette AU where Adrien keeps throwing himself into danger to protect her because “she’ll just bring him back” but she never thought she’d fall so hard for the guy she met by accidentally reanimating his corpse

and can she marry someone who’s legally dead anyways?

like. for tax reasons

[mattodore]

guy whose “extended one-night stand” regularly deploys polish to call a little mouse

[dykedvonte]

Can you talk about trans!Curly a little bit more? I'm curios if you have any headcanons and the like

-💀

It's just such a thing in my mind because it adds a truthful sadness and differing aspect to mouthwashing.

If Curly was trans it adds the horror of the horribly selfish thought he could have easily been in Anya's situation. It could've been him but it wasn't and he so conflicted on the pit it put in his stomach that brings and the shameful relief it wasn't. In this scenario he is friends with Jimmy for a long time still. Jimmy likely knew him pretransition. Maybe he gave Curly weird looks then, maybe they never stopped after, maybe they seemed meaner. They are guys now, bros, both of them are. He doesn't really have to worry what those looks mean anymore, Jimmy just has that face with him sometimes. It's recontextualizing a lot of things for him that he was in denial about or too ashamed to admit. How naive he was being and how he let that get another person hurt.

Specifically with Anya, it's he knows the dread and fear she's feeling. He can understand it because he had to live with it for a good portion of his life, he knows it cause he still does, just in a slightly different way. It makes him think of all the times he's been alone with Jimmy, all the times he's been way more drunk off his ass and not remember the night, Jimmy was always with him the next day. Makes him think of the comments he would laugh off both because that's what guys do but because that part of being a girl says to laugh so Jimmy doesn't do something. It's the selfish realization that he was never safe and he's uncertain now too. Mad at himself for forgeting that feeling, espcially since for a long time he would've been considered the only woman on a crew (with all that implies) for a long time.

He should've taken those blinders off, step back into that position for just a moment and it's so much more painful that Anya likely came to him because he should've gotten it. Those thoughts don't leave his mind after the crash when he's in an even more vulnerable position than she was...

[hoofpeet]

With ur little roster of sonas representing ur brain havoc is that Alters or just a visual way to process things. I know people have been bugging you about possible DID but ur really not beating the allegations /lh

Mostly a visualizer.. They're like. Different levels of disassociation with consistent 'feels' & traits that ive come to treat like separate people to make navigating life a little easier; so if that's what an alter is than I guess. Mayhaps! But it's not really the type of thing I would feel comfortable diagnosing myself with regardless !

[swan2swan]

It's a good thing he's in a bathtub, because that guy is a MESS.

[caeslxys]

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)

As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)

He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.

(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)

It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.

(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)

[iguessitsjustme]

Something I find fascinating about Wandee Goodday is that no one has kissed yet (I know Ye and Cher have kissed but...) Like not a full on make out session despite having an established couple in the show that they could be using to show us kisses. But we get no kiss sex scenes from Yak and Dee and soft, somewhat chaste scenes from Ye and Cher. We all know both couples are fucking. But the lack of kisses where normally the show would have one couple more active in that department tells me how important kissing is to this story.

Dee has stated that it's silly but he doesn't want to kiss unless he loves that person and is serious with them. But the entire show is respecting the no kiss rule which tells me that it's not silly. The entire show is respecting Dee's boundary here. And yes, Yak and Dee have come so close to kissing so many times, but they haven't. Dee has always pushed him away and Yak has always respected it when he does.

It makes me wonder what's going to happen once the main couple does eventually lock lips. Will that open the floodgates? Will the audience get to see both couples kissing then? Or will it continue to withhold that specific moment of intimacy. There's something the show is saying about the expected parts of intimacy being taken for granted and also deserving of privacy and that's up to the people in the relationship.

Kissing can be an act of love and desire, but what the show is saying is that it is not a requirement for those things. I can be completely talking out of my ass here, but something about this is really sitting with me. Not only do we get Plakao as ace representation, someone who wants a partner to cherish and be cherished without sexual expectations, but we also get the show reinforcing the ideas that love comes in all forms with so many different acts and different people are comfortable with different things. And all of that is okay. And all of those boundaries are worthy of being respected. Regardless of societies expectations for what it means to be in a relationship and be physical, whatever is right for you is right and isn't that just beautiful?

[madbard]

“Ford is irredeemably self-centered” this, “Ford’s a bad person” that, etc…

Alright. Tell me then.

What was he supposed to do?!?!

Be a better brother? Ford loved Stan! When they were children, Ford took care of his brother as best he could. But Ford was also a kid in a bad situation, and there were limits to what he could do. Not to mention that Stan relied so heavily on Ford that it honestly wasn’t healthy for either of them. Stan couldn’t stand by himself and he wasn’t trying. They were both struggling; maybe pin that on the parents instead of the kids.

Not be angry at Stan for messing with his experiment? Of course Ford was angry! This was his dream college; in that moment he thought his entire future was crumbling. I assure you, if my sibling had ruined my chances of getting into my dream school I would have been more than a little upset, and I’m sure the same goes for most of the people reading this. Of course, Ford did hold onto that anger for considerably longer than was justified, but in this case I would argue that Ford less “held a grudge for 10 years out of spite” and more “never got the chance to make things right with his brother and held onto that anger because it was better than the nauseating guilt over that final argument, the uncertainty at times that his brother was even alive.” (Which is not to say that Ford isn’t spiteful. Our man has plenty of spite. But him being spiteful is not the only thing going on here.) Which brings us to our next point.

Stop Stan from being kicked out? How?! That household does not appear to have been a safe place for either of the brothers. Should Ford have gotten himself kicked out too? Should he have known exactly what to say to talk his father down - the man who just violently threw his twin out of the house? Ford didn’t kick Stan out. He just wasn’t able to stop it from happening, and that’s not something any teen should be blamed for.

Behave himself when reuniting with Stan at the culmination of the worst period of his life thus far? There’s stress. And then there’s being dangerously sleep-deprived and at the mercy of a horrifying demon that betrayed you, leaving you alone in a shack in the woods with no one to call for help except your estranged brother, who’s complaining about a mullet, of all things. Yeah, I’m not going to say Ford’s behavior was anything other than atrocious here. But really. How well would you handle that?

Thanked his brother? Stan could have destroyed the universe; it makes sense that Ford’s upset! He’s also had literally decades to stew in the terror and fury he experienced in those last moments before falling through the portal (something which almost certainly would not have happened if it weren’t for Stan). Again, Ford’s not acting like the world’s best brother here, but it’s understandable.

Ford’s not perfect. He can be arrogant, spiteful, and bitter. He makes serious mistakes (often due to his own hubris) that put himself, his loved ones, and sometimes the entire universe in grave peril. Ford is, in fact, deeply flawed. That’s part of what makes him a fun character! It’s also what makes him a well-written and believable character. Yes, Ford acts like a jerk. He does so quite often.

Ford also spends nearly the entire narrative bouncing from one deeply toxic situation to another, desperately trying to survive and make life better for himself and his family and watching as his brother makes mistake after mistake - sometimes making choices with severe, negative consequences on Ford’s own life.

Ford is doing the best he can. He’d not a bad person. He tries to be good. He tries to do the right thing.

He just fails sometimes.

Don’t we all?

[happyk44]

Something something Percy wishing he loved Nico in the same way because he can't stand the idea of hurting him, even though Nico has never needed Percy to love him in the same way or even to love him at all.

[illmoraineakoi]

Do you guys think that if Chosen ever learned of the 'deal' Orange made with Alan in AvA4, he'd automatically see it as Alan using it to indenture Orange to him and blow a gasket?

Especially if Orange recounted the deal incorrectly, or perhaps even if Orange himself misinterpreted or misunderstood it.

Because the original wording of the deal was "If you help me animate, I'll let you free so long as you don't wreck my computer."

Alan likely meant this to mean that so long as Orange didn't mess up the computer and helped him animate, Orange would be allowed to live on the computer. Which is already a little questionable, placing a stipulation on having a place to live. A very 'earn your keep' sort of vibe.

But the original deal makes no mention of RGBY or their role in everything. Honestly, it seems like they just kinda moved onto the desktop at some point between 2015-2017. But like most things with Orange, things tend to revolve more around them than himself, when it comes to his priorities.

So I don't think it's too out of the question to think that Orange automatically pooled them in with himself in this deal, and they became another factor of it when they originally weren't involved at all.

A common interpretation I've seen is Orange misunderstanding the deal, and thinking that if he helps Alan animate, his friends get to stay too. IE: If he doesn't, Alan reserved the right to kick them off or bar access to the computer from them. Placing a stipulation not just on Orange's own ability to have a place to live, but on his ability to see and have access to his friends. Turning it into a privilege earned by fulfilling the responsibilities expected of him.

Orange undoubtedly likes to animate with Alan, that's not an issue, but perhaps he still thinks that he has a responsibility to do it in order to maintain the status quo of not just his life, but all of their lives. Maybe he sees it as a sort of 'payment', in a way. Perhaps he doesn't even really believe that Alan would be mean enough to revoke those things from him, to do what is his right to by the terms of their deal, but there's a part of him that's secretly unwilling to chance it.

Or perhaps he doesn't even think the deal is active anymore. It's been so many years, after all, and they've ruined Alan's files multiple times (unintentionally) and nothing's happened. It could've long since become null and void.

But from Chosen's perspective, it would likely seem a lot worse than Orange ever thought it was. Perhaps even worse than ALAN realized it was.

Because Alan has put a price tag on Orange's right to even have a place to live. A price tag (potentially) on his ability to see and interact with his friends. A price tag on his nice, happy life. Maybe even a price tag on his very life.

And I think Chosen would be very upset about that. And perhaps even more upset when Orange seems confused about why he's upset about it, when Orange doesn't understand how predatory it looked from Chosen's perspective.

After all, it's not even a very big price tag. It's just a little animating. It's not that bad, and Orange likes doing it anyway, so what's the problem?

But at the end of the day, it is still little more than a ball and chain made of words and letters, binding him to doing what Alan wants him to do with the potential threat of ruthless punishment should he disobey or rebel of cause harm to the computer.

And really, what difference is there, between using a stick figure as a pop up blocker and using one as an animating assistant? Does the fact that he enjoys it really outweigh or justify the fact that you've placed a condition on his very livelihood since the day of his creation?

Yeah. Chosen would not be happy.