#why would i want to be stuck with 1-2 gay romances?

[kwyoz]

wow, i love when the dragon age fandom is very normal about veilguard's companions being pansexual and totally not being lowkey really fucking pan and bi phobic.

[1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt]

Today on popping the corn and feeding the children, what do you folks think of this discussion? :)

I'm always curious to hear what other Trek fans, especially queer Trek fans, think about our place in Trek history and how we fare as the queer participants within our fandom. What have your experiences been like?

Overwhelmingly I've found a great reception and a welcoming attitude, but I admit that has increased considerably since the 90s. However, there are still some Trek fans who seem to be vehemently in denial about queer history in Star Trek, or the fact that anyone who has worked on Trek has pro-LGBT attitudes. This always surprises me considering some of the blatant queer content we have already seen in Star Trek such as the Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn kiss.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion that followed and seeing the overwhelming outpouring of support coming from Star Trek fans in response to this thread.

Here was my two cents contribution:

"No, what they said was factual.

Have you forgotten Nichelle Nichols was indeed an African American woman in the core seven bridge crew back in 1966?

Or the fact that Gene Roddenberry went out of his way to write The Motion Picture Novel, creating the term "T'hy'la: friend, brother, lover" so that fans could choose which interpretations of Kirk and Spock they saw fit? He also embraced K/S fans and hired a number of them to write the earliest Star Trek novels, including the very first official one (The New Voyages Vol. 1 & 2) which included slash fiction as well as Gene's approval/forward in the books.

In case anyone has forgotten, here's a little bit of background on Gene Roddenberry and his perspectives on queerness in Star Trek.

He admitted that in his early life he was very affected by how society and culture treated the LGBT community, and that he too found himself subjugating and judging others for that lifestyle because it was what people did at that time. As he got older and had more life experience, he began working with a number of queer artists in Hollywood -- and through TOS, a number of queer individuals began asking questions about Kirk and Spock.

Instead of vehemently shutting down this perspective, Roddenberry was intrigued, and saw potential to tap into a large audience (LGBT) that most others didn't want to go near or acknowledge publicity-wise. He saw it as an opportunity to expand the fanbase while also pushing yet another envelope.

But with the heat already on the show for what they'd already pushed, he found he was often stuck between what he'd like to do and what production would let him get away with. There are a number of Kirk and Spock scenes in scripts that got cut out for leaning a little too obviously romantic. Tiny trickles of that content still made it in were infamous moments like the backrub scene in Shore Leave. Even the 2009 movie had a K/S moment while Spock Prime and Kelvin Spock talked that was written and filmed that was cut out of the final product.

Queer subtext and coding has always been relentlessly weeded away at with an excuse ready to go for why they always try to cut us out, but we all know it's because they are scared of the homophobic backlash and ratings hits. Look how violently homophobes went after the gay romance episode of The Last of Us **just this year**. This has always been our reality, so for someone like Roddenberry to make efforts in the 70s? That was massive.

But Gene as well as the queer/slash Trek community managed to accomplish some things in the 70s which I'm surprised more folks don't talk about or give much credit.

In the same TMP novel which features "T'hy'la" and the famous footnote, Gene cleverly wrote Kirk with a bisexual/pansexual lens: Kirk describes himself as *preferring* women but being open to "physical love in **any** of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms." (Direct quote from Genes book). Basically, Captain Kirk was DTF with whoever if there was a connection, which was a very progressive take for a character in a novel written in 1979, but made sense for the future which would have a lot less hang ups about sex and love compared to our current rather puritan/conservative society.

I also prefer women, but I married a man. Shout out to Gene Roddenberry for giving us a seat at the table back in the 70's when folks *still* try to insist there is no place for K/S or queer concepts in Trek, because he made efforts -- however small -- to employ queer people and show queer perspectives. According to David Gerrold, LGBT+ representation was a big thing that Gene personally pushed for in TNG and wanted various depictions of love/couples in the Risa scenes, to name one example.

In the 70s, fanzines led to meetings and swapped fanmade magazines, which got so big that they needed hotel centers, then convention centers, then one day the TOS cast came to one and what we know as modern fan conventions were born -- inspiring even George Lucas who attended Trek conventions in the 70s and saw how popular Trek was in syndication; it was a great climate to launch his Space Opera. Star Wars then became so huge that we got TMP.

But none of that would have happened without the level of organization, passion, and creativity that those fans poured into Star Trek and their characters after it got cancelled and went into syndication.

Without queer folks we wouldn't have George Takei, Theodore Sturgeon who gave us Tribbles, Bill Theiss and his amazing TOS costumes, Mike Minor's art direction, Merritt Butrick, David Gerrold (writer for TOS, TAS, TNG) to name a few of many queer contributors to Trek that Roddenberry respected and tried to go to bat for wherever he could in a climate that was absolutely impossible to gain an inch in.

At a time during the 70s and 80s when so many people resented and feared the queer community and wanted us to disappear, especially in the 80s during the AIDS epidemic which many homophobes claimed was "God's punishment to the gay community" or "Gods's answer" to our "hedonism", thinking we'd gotten our just desserts and should just disappear . . .

During that time, Gene Roddenberry gave us queer folks a place to say: "You know what? Sure. Write your stories. TV says you guys shouldn't exist, they pull books with queer people off the shelves and burn them. Laws exist specifically to forbid you guys from loving each other, and call you mentally ill. You can't even hold hands in public. But I'm going to validate you guys and invite you to write novels or work for me, try to see what we can get by production, and allow you to see yourselves in my characters if you want to. There's a place for you in our fandom."

He gave us bi/pan Kirk, he gave us K/S is open to interpretation. In Phase 2 Kirk's surviving nephew Peter, son of his brother Sam from Operation: Annihilate!, was going to be written as gay and living on the Enterprise with his partner -- that also got chopped and reworked into a script that wouldn't get used until decades later. That was huge at a time that being queer was officially listed as a mental illness, and villainized due to the AIDS crisis.

So before you try to dismiss or tell K/S + queer Trek fans whether or not they deserve a seat at the table, remember that Gene Roddenberry was among the **first** to pull that seat out for us in a climate that was ruthlessly against LGBT+ folks." -- 1Shirt2ShirtRedShirtDeadShirt

P.S: Have some cute bisexual/pansexual K/S pride gifs. :) Pride month is a hop, skip and a jump away.

LLAP!🖖💚

[child-of-helios]

hello. I've a rather stupid question. I've only read the books once, as a kid, and I don't understand why people hate calpyso x leo. whys it so bad? why does everyone seems to hate it on here?

xxx,

eurydice

First of all, this is my first ever ask, I've made it mother :D Secondly, I'd gladly explain! Though please note that it really has been a good while since I've read the books too, so my memory is kinda foggy :] Warnings for: Slight mentions (but not too much) of rape, pedophilia and mental illness (oh boy this is a tough one)

So, I have made a post abt this before, but it was written in a fit of rage so not my proudest moment (but my most popular post, oops). Anyways, I feel that the hate towards Calypso x Leo is because of a few reasons. 1. It simply didn't get enough development to feel worth it imo. Similar to Jason x Piper, I felt like there wasn't enough there to warrant a canon ship. There is also the fact that personally, I thought that their dynamic was more of a familial or that of siblings, which made me uncomfortable. I would've much rather have them be friends. 2. The uncomfortable age gap. It feels very weird because while yes, Calypso was depicted as a teenager, she is thousands upon thousands of years old. The fact that she fell in love with a literal child is incredibly weird. It was weird enough with Percy, but at least they didn't end up dating. With Leo though, she did end up dating him and the age gap feels very odd. Its even weirder knowing she had a relationship with Odysseus, who by that point was a pretty old dude so she was probably very mature and an adult (though she doesn't act like it). 3. Calypso is kinda a rapist. In the Odyssey myth, she forces Odysseus (a married man) to sleep with her. I'm sorry, but I can't support any relationship involving a rapist unless its rapist x prison cell. It makes me uncomfortable because she could very well take advantage of Leo, a mentally ill teenager with self-esteem issues. 4. Her toxic treatment of Leo. Calypso was very pissed when Leo arrived on her island, rightfully so after what she had gone through, but even then her treatment of his was outright cruel, especially compared to that of Percy and Odysseus. She made him sleep outside, exposing him to the elements after he got flung through the air and ended up on her island, which must've caused some damage. Then after they started dating, I still felt uncomfortable reading about the two, because their dynamic just didn't work, and I don't recall her apologizing to him for her treatment of him. 5. Leo's arc was thrown away. I think the worst of all, is how this impacted Leo's character. He should've had an arc where he learnt to love himself, but because of Calypso he didn't. I think the moral was supposed to be: 'even if you're mentally ill or have problems, you still deserve love!' but it came over more as: 'ignore your issues and get all your love from someone else.' Isn't it more important for kids to learn about self-love? And as an extra: what could've been. I think that Leo shouldn't have gone back for Calypso, that that ship shouldn't have happened. I prefer him going back to Echo and them learning about self-love together as buddies (and maybe evolving into more than that). Echo was stuck in an abusive relationship with the Narcissist, so I think it would a good arc for them both. I also think that if you really wanted a romance, Jason x Leo would've been much better. We know that Rick can write good gay romances, we know that Piper turns out to be a lesbian, so why not make Jason and Leo gay? I think it would add much more to the tragedy of Jason's death, but that's for another post (and this one is getting too long already oops). In conclusion, I think Caleo is bad for many reasons, but especially because it didn't have enough time to develop and the dynamic was simply too creepy for me to get invested in. Sorry for the super long post- Have a lovely day :D

[sixhours]

i know you by heart - chapter 2

Series Chapter Index | Read on AO3 | Complete

Rating: Explicit, 18+, here be smut Series tags: The Last of Us, The Last of Us (HBO), Prospect, Joel Miller x Ezra, Joel & Ellie, Ezra & Cee, Joel is bad at feelings and relationships, Ellie is a little shit (affectionate), mostly follows canon after season 1, SMUT, gay sex, bisexual!Joel, period-typical homophobia, light angst, romance, age gap (~10ish years), I've probably forgotten some so please let me know <3

When Joel was 17, he kissed a boy for the first time.

His name was Kenny Farmington, and they were both a little drunk on cheap beer and a nice Texas night and the special high that comes from being not quite a man and not quite a boy, stuck in that in-between time when it felt like anything was possible. Joel had a truck and a part-time job at Regis Construction and his whole life spread out before him like an open road.

It was a nice enough kiss. But when Joel opened his eyes after their lips parted and saw fear rather than lust in his friend’s eyes, he knew it ended there. Everyone knew Kenny’s dad was a raging homophobe who would “whoop his ass” if he thought his son might be “one of them dirty fuckin’ faggots”.

Joel wasn’t convinced his own father wouldn’t have had something to say about it had he known.

And, oh well. Joel liked girls, too. He liked them enough to bring Eileen Folsom home and make out with her in the basement rec room at her parents’ house until his cock was weeping and his balls were blue. He liked them well enough to get to third base with Cindy Sherwood in the back of his truck. He liked girls plenty.

It was the eighties, anyway. AIDS was spreading like wildfire, and small-town Texas was hardly the place to go looking for action if you weren’t straight as a goddamn arrow.

Four years later, Joel liked one particular girl enough to knock her up, and then he didn’t have much time to consider whether he’d want to kiss another boy, because he was going to be a father.

And then there was Sarah. And a divorce. And his parents died. And Tommy went off to war and came back, and there was overtime and working doubles to keep the roof over their heads and the payment on the truck up, and who the fuck had time to think about boys or girls or anyone in between.

And then there was cordyceps. And his daughter, his baby girl, bleeding out in his arms.

And then Joel didn’t spend much time thinking about what he liked at all. He kept going for the ones who needed him without a thought spared for himself.

And then came Ellie.

Ellie, who patched up his heart and turned his life upside down and made him care about something other than brute survival again. Tore down his walls and broke him open and somehow left him whole.

Whole, and…wanting.

Which is why, forty years after Kenny Farmington, he doesn’t feel bad about imagining another man’s face, or hands, or lips on his body when he strokes himself in the shower. He doesn’t feel ashamed when he gets off to the thought of another man’s mouth on his cock. It’s not the first time he’s been attracted to a man, and it won’t be the last.

No, he feels bad because that man is his daughter’s fucking therapist. That man is someone she needs to trust, someone she raves about over dinner, someone who is, in her words, “so fucking cool”.

And his duty, first and foremost, is to Ellie.

So he tries not to imagine Ezra when his libido comes roaring back to life after years of dormancy, boiling his blood and making him feel half his age.

And he fails, miserably.

He comes out of his own bad dreams to hers more often than not. Sometimes she calls for Riley, sometimes for him, and sometimes she just screams.

Tonight it’s the latter, and he’s across the hall and through her door in seconds, a reflex perfected over months.

“Hey, Ellie,” he mumbles, only half conscious. “Ellie, you’re okay.”

“He was–he–I can’t breathe ,” she chokes out, panting in short, wispy breaths.

“Yeah, y’can, in and out,” he says. “Like we practiced. C’mon, you got it. Breathe, baby girl.”

“Can’t,” she gasps, but he feels her back expand and contract under his palm, the movements slowing as each subsequent breath gets longer. He folds her into his arms and rubs her back the way she likes and whispers assurances into her hair as her panicked gasps turn into sobs.

“You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay, baby, you’re alright.”

In these moments, she goes from being the smart-mouthed, sassy little shit he loves to a scared, vulnerable little kid. He prefers her bratty. This is too much like those brutal winter days when they came so close to losing each other.

Eventually, she sniffs and scoots over so he can stretch out next to her on top of the covers. He puts his arm out so she can curl into him, one hand gripping his t-shirt at his side. He swears all his sleep shirts are stretched out funny; even after washing, they hold the imprint of her fingers.

They both sleep better this way, though neither of them will admit it. She swears she’s too old to snuggle and he worries what people might think. But after months on the road, after so many nights camped out next to each other in the dirt, the comfort of someone else’s breathing makes for a powerful lullaby.

“Bad one?” he asks, tracing the line of her temple with his thumb.

“They’re all bad ones,” she mutters into his chest. “Wish I wasn’t like this.”

“Like what?”

“All…broken and shit.”

“We’re all pretty fuckin’ broken, kiddo.”

“Yeah, but I’m like, extra broken.”

He swallows hard, wonders how many times he’s dreamed of a vast field bordered by blocked highways, the sound of helicopters overhead, gunfire in the distance. The smell of blood.

“Know it feels like that…but it’ll get better,” he whispers, hugging her tightly, wondering if it counts as a lie. “Jus’ takes time.”

He’s almost dozed off when she speaks again, her voice low and distant.

“I don’t belong here.”

His brow furrows. “What d’you mean?”

She doesn’t answer. He can’t imagine a world in which she doesn’t belong with him, can’t imagine a life where she isn’t exactly where she is right now. Knowing how close they came to that reality, just the thought is enough to set his heart to racing.

Swear to me.

“What do you mean, kiddo?” he prompts.

“Nothing,” she murmurs. “S’nothing, never mind.”

“Look, Ellie–”

“It’s fine, Joel. I’m just…tired,” she mumbles, nuzzling into his chest. “Don’t wanna talk.”

“Alright,” he whispers, cupping the back of her head. “Alright, then. Get some sleep.”

She does, and he doesn’t. He stares at the opposite wall and listens to her breathe and wonders if he will ever not feel like he’s failing her.

Ellie doesn’t offer much about her weekly appointments with Ezra and Joel doesn’t ask. Instead, she talks about the music they listened to (“None of that Linda Ronstadt shit.”) and begs Joel for a record player. He swaps one of his refurbished guitars for a small portable model at the trading post, and Ezra sends her home with new records each week.

There’s a lot of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and AC/DC, all played at a volume that Joel might find concerning if he wasn’t already half deaf.

Late November comes and she hasn’t had a nightmare in two weeks. She still grumbles about going to school, still talks back and swears like a goddamn sailor, but there are no more pink slips and she hasn’t stabbed any more desks. Or students.

Small favors.

They’re walking into the Saturday movie together before he sees Ezra again.

“What’re they playin’?” Joel asks.

“It’s a Wonderful Life," Ellie chirps. "It’s black and white, a classic.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Just ‘cause it’s in black and white don’t make it a classic.”

“Thought you’d like it that way. Means it’s old as dirt, like you.”

“Was born in ‘67, you little shit,” he grumbles. “We had color movies.”

“Whatever you say, grandpa.”

Ellie drags him into the rec center, eager to claim one of the big couches at the back so she can sprawl out and hog three-quarters of the damn thing.

“I save seats, you get popcorn,” she says. Joel makes a show of rolling his eyes at being bossed around, but this is part of the routine. He makes his way to the table with the little wax bags of popcorn and grabs two. He doesn’t like the stuff, it gets stuck in his teeth, but she’ll eat his portion. That’s also part of the routine.

He gets back to the couch and motions for her to scoot over. “I get the corner.”

She obliges, then takes her usual seat, propped against his right side in a heartbreakingly familiar position.

“Don’t fall asleep this time,” he mutters, handing her the popcorn.

“As if,” she scoffs.

“You did last week.”

“Yeah, ‘cause it was one of those stupid action movies.”

“ Die Hard is not a stupid action movie,” Joel grumbles. “You wanna talk about Christmas classics.”

“You’re kidding, right? What part of ‘dude spends two boring-ass hours climbing through air vents’ makes Die Hard a Christmas movie?”

Before he can make his case for Bruce Willis, she catches sight of someone across the room and gasps.

“Hey, Ezra! Over here!”

She jumps up and waves, eliciting a faint smile from the man as he approaches. “Hello, my young prodigy. And…just Joel.”

Joel nods in greeting; his tongue suddenly doesn’t want to cooperate.

“Sit with us,” she says, scooting closer to Joel and patting the seat.

“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Ezra says, eyes flicking uncertainly to Joel’s, but Ellie is already pulling him down on her other side.

“Plenty of room,” Joel coughs. “S’no trouble.”

As soon as Ezra’s butt hits the seat, Ellie begins chattering about Christmas movies as Ezra listens with rapt attention. Joel catches only a fraction of their conversation–he blames his bad ear and the rumble of the crowd filing in around them–but he can’t help but watch the two with an unexpected feeling of relief. It’s clear she’s made a friend.

The opening credits start and Ellie turns back to Joel, tucking herself under his arm. She munches on her popcorn until it’s gone, at which point Joel wordlessly hands her his share.

He’s never liked It’s a Wonderful Life , even less so after Sarah’s death. They watched it every Christmas at her insistence. He thought it was dumb then, and twenty years and an apocalypse have done nothing to change his opinion. But for Ellie, he’ll watch just about anything, one arm draped over the back of the couch as she cuddles up against him. 

Halfway through the movie, with their empty popcorn bags discarded on the floor, Ellie is curled up against Joel’s leg, head pillowed on his thigh, breathing deeply.

“Told ya not to fall asleep,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t try to move or wake her, reaching down to stroke her hair instead. Movie nights are good for something, even if it means suffering through Jimmy Stewart’s manufactured crisis.

When he looks up again, Ezra’s attention has drifted from the movie to watch them, a soft expression on his face. Their eyes meet and he smiles a little and Joel feels that warm flush creep up his neck.

He’s used to people avoiding him. Walking around with his scowl and his “asshole voice”, as Ellie calls it. It worked in the QZ and it works in Jackson. He’s known for being gruff and stoic and taking no bullshit. He saves his smiles for Ellie’s shitty puns.

If that makes him an asshole, so be it.

But Ezra clearly hasn’t gotten the message, and Joel doesn’t know what to make of that.

When the movie is over, he rouses Ellie with a gentle flick to her ear. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

“Mmmph,” she growls. “Didn’t fall asleep, asshole.”

“Sure, kid,” he mutters. “C’mon, let’s get you home.”

She makes it to her feet, rubbing her eyes, and lets Joel help her with her jacket, one of the sleeves having turned inside out in her rush to claim the couch.

“Bye, Ezra,” she yawns.

“Goodnight, young prodigy. Joel,” he nods, those warm brown eyes lingering. He opens his mouth as if to say something else, but doesn’t, and then Ellie is pulling Joel into the exiting crowd.

They’re eating dinner at the caf next week when Ellie brings him up again.

“Ezra wants you.”

Joel chokes on a bite of stew. “W-what?”

“Chew much?” Ellie raises an eyebrow. “I said, Ezra wants to see you.”

“Oh, right, uh…why does…Ezra wanna see me?” he coughs, reaching for his water.

“My last session’s on Wednesday. He wants to ‘check in’ or whatever.”

“Oh…right…fine,” Joel says, pulse suddenly a nagging throb in his throat. “I’ll, uh…I’ll drop by tomorrow before patrol.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Yeah?” Joel stabs at a carrot. “So?”

“Sooooo he’s not in on Sundays.”

“M’sure he can spare five minutes,” Joel mutters.

“Whatever, dude,” Ellie shrugs. “Oh, hey–Dina invited me to go with her and Jesse after stable duty. They’re gonna show me around the south quad; the sheep pasture. Your favorite.”

“Dina…Dina,” Joel mutters, thinking. “Wait, ain’t that the one who–”

“Yeah,” Ellie says, blushing a little. “She’s kinda cool when she’s not being a fucking jerk.”

Joel hides his smile in his mug. “Alright. Just be careful an’ get back here for dinner.”

“Sir, yes sir,” she says through a mouthful of potatoes, throwing in a little mock salute.

This time, he doesn’t bother hiding his smile.

He finds himself on Ezra’s doorstep the next morning. Faint music drifts from inside and by the time he finally works up the courage to knock, Ezra is peering at him from the other side of the glass, half-naked and toweling his hair dry.

“Oh, uh…hey. I, uh–”

Joel tells himself the cold December air accounts for the sudden flush of color in his cheeks. Ezra’s torso is still slick from the shower, a pair of gray sweats hanging low on narrow hips. His bare chest, much like Joel’s, is dappled with scars. He finds himself entranced by a drop of water that escapes a dark curl and lands on his neck, slipping down the length of his throat and settling on one firm pectoral. Joel bites the inside of his lower lip hard.

Maybe Sunday was a bad idea.

“Joel! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

And maybe Joel is reading too much into it, but the way Ezra’s face lights up makes him think it is a pleasure.

“Uh…I can come back–”

But the other man has already opened the door and is ushering him inside. “Nonsense, come in.”

“Ellie said you wanted, uh…needed to see me?”

“I did! I do. ”

The strains of a Tom Petty song float from the office. Ezra ducks in and stops the player with a light needle scratch.

“Coffee? It’s not the genuine article, I’m afraid, just chicory, but I brewed more than enough for two.”

“Uh…sure. Thanks.”

“Make yourself comfortable, I’ll return posthaste.”

‘Posthaste.’ Jesus.

Joel stands at the door of the little office with his hands in his pockets, slowly taking in the room with fresh eyes. He’s drawn to the record shelf. Curious, he thumbs lightly through the stacks of vinyl, finding an eclectic mix of basically everything. There’s even some of “that Linda Ronstadt shit”.

“Your young prodigy prefers Pearl Jam,” Ezra says from the doorway, startling Joel a little. “I’m trying to broaden her horizons a bit.”

He’s put on a t-shirt, his hair still tousled and damp around his ears, and he holds out a steaming mug of chicory coffee.

“Thanks,” Joel takes it gruffly, sips at it, burns his tongue, sputtering and making a damn fool of himself in the process. “Yeah, she’s, uh…she’s really impressed with your collection.”

“We’ve had quite the musical education,” Ezra smiles, that same boyish grin. “I’ve enjoyed her company immensely over these last few weeks, I have to say.”

“Uh…good,” Joel says. “She, uh, said you needed me for somethin’?”

“Sure, sure. Have a seat.”

Joel does, setting his mug down on the coffee table as Ezra does the same. 

“The council mandated twelve weeks; our last appointment is coming up. I just wanted to convey my deep appreciation for–”

The office door, slightly ajar, is suddenly flung open.

“Ez, I’m gonna–whoa.”

A lanky, blonde-haired girl, not much older than Ellie by Joel’s estimation, rushes into the room, then stops short. She blinks at Joel and grimaces in apology.

“Door was open,” the girl says.

“We’re not–I’m not working, Cee,” Ezra says. “Cee, this is Joel. Joel, Cee.”

“Hi,” Cee says. “Sorry, I just…I’m at the greenhouse today. ‘Til six.”

Ezra nods. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, birdie.”

And then she’s gone with a wave and a “later” over her shoulder, and Ezra’s smile softens.

“I have a young prodigy of my own,” he murmurs. “You aren’t the only one to take in a stray.”

“Your kid?”

“No…no, not exactly. I’m afraid I don’t share your fatherly tendencies,” he muses. “Fellow travelers, let’s say. She’s helped me out of a scrape or two, and I do the same when I can. We make a formidable team…as do you and your Ellie, I believe.”

Joel bites his lip. When they were on the road, he would have said they made a good team. Now he’s not so sure.

“Right, uh…you were sayin’, about Ellie?”

Ezra smiles and relaxes back into his chair.

“Joel, I think your young prodigy is quite possibly the sanest person alive in the town of Jackson. She has a knack for seeing things exactly as they are, and the soul of someone twice her age. It’s truly…remarkable. It’s evident she’s endured some trauma, but she has a strong constitution.”

Joel braces himself for the inevitable “but”.

She won’t behave. She swears too much. She’s too loud.

She needs someone who can take care of her, and you’re not cutting it.

You’re failing her.

“But…?”

Ezra raises an eyebrow, shrugs. “That’s it. I know from some…personal experience,” he says, eyes flicking toward the office door, “that it’s sometimes difficult for a man to know where he stands with these things. For what it’s worth, you’re doing a fine job with her.”

Joel snorts softly. “Yeah, right.”

“I am wholeheartedly serious,” the other man says. “I’m sure she’s awash in the usual teenage reticence, but in present company, she speaks of you fondly. She tells me she’s lucky to have you, perhaps not in so many words, but it’s there. And I’d agree. She is lucky to have you, Joel.”

Joel blinks, surprised to feel the prickle of tears in the corners of his eyes, the sudden overwhelming relief of it. He ducks his head.

“That’s…uh…that’s good,” Joel manages. “She’s, uh…”

He can’t finish, his tongue feels stuck in his mouth. Ezra nudges a basket of handkerchiefs across the coffee table, and Joel almost laughs aloud at the absurdity. A year ago, if someone told him he’d be crying in a therapist’s office he would have shot them point blank and slept like a damn baby after.

She’s my whole damn world.

She deserves better.

“She’s a good kid,” he finishes thickly.

“Indeed. For the purposes of the council’s involvement, I don’t think she’s a danger to herself or others,” Ezra continues. “And that’s what I’ll be putting in my report.”

“Alright. That’s…that’s real good,” Joel sighs.

He swipes a cloth from the basket and rubs at his eyes. It’s like taking his first breath of air after drowning. For the first time since arriving in Jackson, he thinks maybe she’s going to be fine. They might just make it through.

Ezra gets up and Joel does the same, crumpling the cloth and stuffing the evidence into his pocket.

“Before you go, would you humor me?” Ezra says. “There’s something I like to do with my clients. Not that you’re a client, but…I’d like to satisfy a certain…curiosity.”

He goes to the record shelf and begins thumbing through the albums as if looking for something specific. Eventually, he pulls one down, examining it thoughtfully before turning and bringing it over.

“Give this a listen,” Ezra murmurs. “Tell me what you think. A…musician’s opinion.”

Butterflies alight in Joel’s stomach at the timbre of his voice. That wanting is back, filling in for the weight of the anxiety he’s carried for so many months. Ezra watches Joel’s face with an odd kind of quiet, as if searching for something.

If Joel didn’t know better, he’d think he was nervous.

“Uh, sure,” he says, accepting the album after a too-long pause. “I’ll…let you know.”

And then the moment is gone, and Joel is leaving, record tucked under one arm, half relieved, half longing, and entirely confused.

Later, he sneaks into Ellie’s room to borrow the record player. He takes it to his room, plugs it in, and unsheathes the album.

Eva Cassidy, Songbird .

Joel recognizes the title track, but it’s a softer rendition, softer than any of the music Ellie has brought home and blasted at top volume.

The woman’s soulful, sweet voice draws him in. It’s almost sad. It’s the kind of music that reminds him of Sarah, something she would have asked him to play on the rare nights he was home with enough time to do so. Something she would have sung along with in her soft soprano voice.

Midnights in winter

The glowing fire

Lights up your face in orange and gold

I see your sweet smile

Shine through the darkness

It's line is etched in my memory

So I'd know you by heart

Before long, he’s reaching for his guitar and replacing the needle to repeat the track, frowning as he tries to suss out the key and the chord progression.

Ellie finds him that way sometime later, perched on the edge of the bed with his guitar in his lap.

“Joel, where’d the record pl–oh, hey.”

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, blinking into the dim light. “Sorry…guess I lost track of time. Got caught up here.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, uh…saw Ezra today. He gave me this,” he gestures to the record. “Thought I’d try to play a little.”

She narrows her eyes. “Did you guys talk about me?”

“Yep,” he says, setting the guitar aside. “Ezra told me all the dirt on you.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Said you’re a menace to society. Should lock you up and throw away the key.”

Ellie grins. “Did not.”

“Did too,” Joel smirks. “Said you’re crazier than a squirrel in a nuthouse. Loonier than a lake full of…uh, loons.”

She giggles, music to his ears. “Shut up.”

He has the sudden, desperate desire to pull her in for a hug and ruffle her hair. He settles for giving her shoulder a squeeze.

“How ‘bout we go get some dinner?” he says, standing and propping Songbird up on his dresser for safekeeping. “My treat.”

“You mean the caf’s treat, asshole. And I want my record player back.”

“Who says it’s yours? Don’t see your name on it.”

“Dude, c’mon .”

“So…what do you know about this Ezra guy?”

It’s Christmas Eve, and they’re sitting at the table in Tommy and Maria’s kitchen. It’s been over a week since his conversation with Ezra. He hasn’t been able to get the other man out of his mind, and he definitely doesn’t know what to make of the record album sitting on his bedroom dresser.

Tommy frowns. “Ezra…Ezra…that the one without an arm?”

“Uh-huh.”

A shrug. “Gettin’ hard to keep track, lot of new folks comin’ through. Think he came in a few months ‘fore you, though. Had a girl with him, that much I remember. Why?”

He takes a sip of his beer. “Just curious, s’all. Ellie was seein’ him for the stuff that happened at school. What’d he do before?”

Giggles float in from the living room. Out of the corner of his eye, Joel watches Ellie sitting on the floor next to the tree–her first Christmas ever , she’d eagerly tell anyone who would listen–playing with baby Isabel while Maria dozes on the couch. All of them are stuffed full of a holiday meal that might have been a week’s worth of rations in the QZ.

Sometimes Jackson feels like a mirage in the desert. It’s almost too normal, too safe to be real.

“Think they broke off from a raidin’ party. Honestly, I don’t think we would’ve taken them in ‘cept the girl was in rough shape. Thought maybe he was…y’know…usin’ her or somethin’.”

Joel winces, shoots his brother a knowing look. They’d seen worse.

“But she insisted. Vouched for him,” Tommy continues. “Bit of an odd pair. Just like you and Ellie, I guess.”

“Hmm.”

“Why you askin’?”

He can’t meet his brother’s eyes. “No reason.”

“He’s an odd one but seems harmless. Or harmless enough. Talks fancy,” he mutters. “His kid’s a bit shy but smart as a whip. Reminds me of–”

Tommy stops abruptly, glancing at Joel from the corner of his eye as he takes a long swallow of beer.

“You can say her name, y’know,” Joel murmurs, frowning, scratching at an invisible spot on the table’s surface. “Sarah.”

“Sarah,” Tommy nods, then continues softly, “To be fair, big brother, there was a time when I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, well…things change,” Joel mutters.

He still can’t look at his niece without thinking of her, can’t hold her without feeling the weight of one who didn’t make it on his heart.

But at least he can say her damn name.

“An’ cheers to that,” Tommy smiles, lightly clinking his bottle against Joel’s. “How’s Ellie doin’, anyway?”

He tips his head toward the living room.

“Better,” Joel says, surprised to find he means it. “Think she’s settlin’ in alright.”

“She’s warmin’ up to me,” Tommy grins. “I know she’s been a little prickly. But the other day she caught me at the stables to ask about goin’ on patrols.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“She’s gotta be sixteen to start trainin’…and she needs your permission. Mighta told her that wouldn’t be a problem,” he grins. “Told her I could sweet talk you into just about anythin’.”

Joel rolls his eyes. “Christ.”

“Offered to take her out at some point if it’s alright with you. Just her and me. Said she’d think about it. That’s somethin’, right?”

The hopeful note in his voice is almost heartbreaking. Sarah and her uncle had been thick as thieves, and Tommy’s eagerness to fill that role for Ellie radiated off him like heat off the pavement in a Texas July. He’d been standing on their doorstep two days after they’d come back to Jackson, ready to be the best damn uncle there ever was.

But Ellie was like a feral cat, slow to warm and quick to bite. Didn’t matter that Tommy was family, didn’t matter that Joel trusted him more than anyone else in Jackson, didn’t matter that Tommy would have let her get away with murder if she asked nice. Whether out of jealousy or fear, she’d resisted his careful advances and bribes.

“Yeah…that’s somethin’,” Joel agrees, smirking. 

“How ‘bout you?”

“How ‘bout me what?”

“How’re you settlin’ in?”

Joel snorts. “You sound like Ezra.”

“Yeah? Well…couldn’t hurt to make some friends, maybe.”

“M’fine, Tommy.”

Tommy shrugs. “Just sayin’. If you’re not careful, Maria’ll try to set you up. Likes to think she’s a matchmaker with all that spare time of hers.”

Joel tries and fails to hide a shudder. Yeah, he’s noticed the attention. It’s a small town with an even smaller dating pool, and he might as well be fresh meat thrown into the lion’s den. Ellie gets a kick out of watching him squirm when women approach him at the caf, is all too eager to string them along on his behalf when she really wants to be a shit-stirrer.

His asshole voice gets plenty of use.

Maybe if it were the right person…well. That would be a different story, one that makes him think of the album on his dresser again.

But he’s sure as hell not gonna tell Tommy any of that.

“M’not lookin’ for anything,” he mutters instead, sipping at his beer. “Got my hands full with that one.”

Ellie sits with the baby in her lap. They’ve turned their attention to the packages under the tree. Joel watches as Ellie picks up the presents one by one, checking the tags and shaking them, then offering them to Izzy to chew on. Tomorrow, half the presents will be sticky with drool and tiny teeth marks.

“You sure do, brother,” Tommy chuckles. “You sure do.”

[squeakygeeky]

Favorite BLs of 2022

I made myself stick to a top ten list, but I actually marked over 20 BLs from this year as my very favorites, so there are some shows I’m kind of shocked didn’t make it on here. What a great year! This isn’t a list of ‘best’ shows, so much as the ones that I think will stick with me and are in line with my personal tastes. This list is for shows that ended in 2022, and only includes Asian shows. I love character-driven shows with a bit of quiet breathing room and hidden depths, but at the same time I love love love paranormal romance and a wacky premise. I’m a sucker for food and long takes.

1. Old Fashion Cupcake - A show about how to keep growing as you grow older featuring lots of food and an amazing long take confession. Possibly my number one of all time. I’m still boggled I got a character older than me in a BL.

2. Semantic Error - All killer, no filler and my favorite take on opposites attract. I may have only taken one computer science class but Sangwoo just makes sense to me. It’s the only BL I’ve posted fanfic for so far.

3. To Sir, With Love - It’s not really fair to put it on this list since it’s not actually a BL, it’s the fun gay period drama I’ve been longing for. I loved the romance, but I really loved the whole cinnamon roll brigade (Tian, Yang and Pin).

 4. Bad Buddy - The push-pull dynamic of the leads and the GL side couple pushed it ahead of the pack and I’m still stuck on the rooftop. There’s a lot of nostalgia here since it’s the first one I got the full fandom experience for.

5. DNA Says Love You - It’s about ghost hunters because Amber is metaphorically a ghost, ask me why. It rose in my estimation on rewatching and I just want to watch it again.

6. About Youth - This is my comfort show and it had some of the most mature characters of the year despite them being high schoolers. I probably should have cared that it felt like part of the show was missing, but I didn’t.

7. My Tooth For Your Love - A great relationship and so many plushies, mostly refreshing on the narrative level with some issues towards the end. Sitting on my hands to keep from buying all the tooth merch. 8. Ghost Host, Ghost House - A couple with amazing chemistry and a show with some unexpected depth to the fun ghostly shenanigans. Stay tuned to see if I finally convinced my non-BL watching bff to see this one.

9. Triage - One of the best time loop shows I’ve seen, featuring ‘I saved his life so many times I fell in love with him.’ It would probably be higher but I’m still annoyed about the distribution and haven’t rewatched.

10. Minato Shoji Coin Laundry - Shin was the cutest little bean sprout while also being an absolute thirsty menace, while Minato hung on for dear life. I remember even loving the way it sounded, which is rare for BL

[sassy-assassin]

9 5 people you'd like to know better

My lovely mutual (@reikurusu) tagged me in this and it seemed a fun way to get to know each other better! I kept it at 5 people because I don't know who else to tag since I haven't been back on tumblr for very long yet and am still getting reacquainted with everything/everyone on here.

Last song: Love From The Other Side by Fall Out Boy. I just saw them in concert and this song has been stuck in my head day and night. I like it a lot, it's super catchy! Plus, the line "I'd never go, I just want to be invited" is such a banging introvert lyric.

Currently watching: I recently started watching the show From with my family, we're only on the first season still. It's very dramatic and dark, and we all like to try to guess what is really going on. We'll see how it plays out though, my sister is afraid it might go the way of Lost and get too convoluted and just overall too much. Some of the characters are kind of annoying me already, but I am mainly just watching it when my family is watching it so I'll probably stick with it as long as they are watching it.

On my own, I am watching Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion and My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 on Crunchyroll, while also just randomly rewatching episodes of Moriarty the Patriot (mainly The Two Detectives Act 1 & 2 because I love watching Sherlock and William work together).

Currently reading: Uh I guess, the manga for Moriarty the Patriot since I just finished reading volume 12. I started reading the manga after I finished the anime and didn't realize at first that the English translation isn't yet caught up to where the anime ends with The Final Problem, so now I am impatiently waiting for the next few volumes that come out later in the year.

Of actual book books (I know comics/manga are real books too but it has been so long since I read an actual text-only book that wasn't for school that it is worthy of distinction here), I just finished reading A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske. It had exactly the right mix of intriguing plot and romance that I crave (I can't read much stuff with just one or the other).

Also, if we are talking currently reading then of course I am also reading a stupid amount of fanfics all at once. I am currently rereading floriography by ashrivaille because Sherlock and William solving murders together is my current favorite thing. I ship them so much it's ridiculous (also Mycroft and Albert but that's a whole other thing). I honestly have a difficult time finding actual books to read that aren't fanfiction anymore because I am so used to getting exactly what I want from a story in fanfics due to filters (praise ao3's tagging system) and already knowing the world/characters. I find it difficult to get invested in other books and often find them kind of boring, or like flat? Could just be also because without the specific tags/tropes that are used to label fics, it is harder for me to find books I would be interested in since I'm relying only on plot summary.

Current obsession: Hmm I wonder....?? Yeah, no it's pretty obvious my current obession is Moriarty the Patriot since over half of the media I'm consuming is related to it lol. It's just so satisfying watching William set up these intricate crimes/plots and Sherlock deducing the hell out of them (and also to see evil nobles get what's coming to them).

My sister showed me this scale once on Pinterest where someone had placed character pairs from "be gay do crime" to "be gay and solve crime" and Sherlock and William were in the middle lol. Whatever genre that scale is seems to be my BRAND since the "solve crime" end was Kato and Kambe from Millionaire Detective (one of my fav animes), and while I don't remember what the one originally on the "do crime" side was I feel that Rei and Kazuki from Buddy Daddies fits well there (another of my fav animes).

Wow, this got so long lol. Gonna tag some people I think it would be cool to know more about, but no pressure! Feel free to ignore it if you want :)

@demonicallysassy @hazeltea-returns-to-this-site @16ruedelaverrerie @yoddel @lillylakes

[your-friendly-neighbourh00d-fag]

3, 6, 14, and 18 for that second st ask game

hi nons :)

3- arrange the seasons from your most favourite to least favourite

hrrmmm for the seasons as a whole i'd probably say 2, 3, 4, 1

i think season two was the most balanced, like i can watch s2 from start to finish no problem, whereas 3 is kind of like that but some of the jancy plot in s3 was so painful and dragged on a lot. then four is an absolute dumpster fire /aff, but with some really top tier moments in it. like hawkins plot? fantastic. no notes. cali plot? oh you're being gay, good job, carry on. russia plot and lab plot??? SKIPPPPPP. sorry. my b. its unbalanced. and then i don't really love season one because 1, peak mlvn season and it made it very hard to watch, 2, where is will. i know where he is but i want him back (i just think its better when the whole party is together), and 3, it was kind of smaller scale which i don't like as much. s2 felt more important. on the other hand s1 was stoncy time so i do love that. anyway i have rambled enough, sorry.

6- Which top 5 dynamics that haven’t been explored yet would you want to see?

Madwheeler. MADWHEELER. M A D W H E. E L E R !! ! ! ! !

og party. they've kind of been explored, but not enough!!! give me lucas mike dustin and will back they were literally babies the last time they were all together for the main plot :(

will + nancy// mike and jonathan. come on. the drama. the angst. will and nancy stuck somewhere dangerous and mike and jon stuck somewhere else dangerous and they can't get to eachother. and nance/jon are like 🤨 why do you care so much. gay.

robin and mike. HE NEEDS A GAY MENTOR. COME ON. ROBIN AND MIKE FRIENDSHIP!!!!!

hopclair. elumax gang it has been confirmed for season five this is hOW WE CAN STILLL WIN--

14- Which romance are you indifferent too or just hate? (Fanon and canon)

y'all know my feelings on like, stncy, mlvn, hrringrove, stddie, but idk if there's many im actually indifferent to. i mean, kind of rockie at the moment (just because they haven't fleshed vickie out at all, once she gets a personality and more screentime i think they'll be really cute), probably like, steve/argyle, jon/argyle, + all the chrissy ships. like, im not sure about that, but you could probably convince me. im open to it. stargyle is a pretty ship name though.

18- Which season of st do you think had the best balance between character dynamics/character growth and plot line ?

oh season two for sure. hop/el bonding, byler centric, lumax + dustin + steve, jancy teamup, it was just great with the pairings. the plots were also the best balanced. good job s2. ily.

[whatislife1babydonthurtme]

Things in Stranger Things season 4 (Volume 2) which did not make sense, were forgotten or simply pissed me off.

❗️Spoilers obviously❗️

The whole town was convinced that there was a cult going on and people got up looking for Eddie and seemingly the rest of Hellfire Club because they were convinced it was a cult. Did they just give up? They never showed up again. Also the parents didn't bring this up at the end when everyone was reunited.

Why did Mike believe that the painting was for him and El when he clearly read the letter that said Will was painting it for someone he likes. Additionally, how the fuck did Mike not notice his supposed "best friend" sobbing in the car right next to him? You can clearly see him look in Will's direction but he just doesn't do anything.

Is the police just... dead? Where are they? Why are they not actively going after Jason's crew

Where is Owen? Is he alive? Why did he say that he could get El back in Hawkins in 2 hours tops if the Cali crew said it would take all night to get back, was he gonna call a private jet or something??

Where is the military? They went to that lab and then were never heard of again.

When Nancy was Vecna'd, she was in the laboratory. Why???? She had nothing to do with that place. Why wasn't she robbed from facing her own fears and traumas at the start of volume 2? Also when she got stuck in front of those doors which were blocked off by planks, they were push doors. Why did she rip off all of those planks if she could've just pushed the door and crawled in between those planks. Maybe I'm getting something wrong here but that just seems like such a hard thing to miss while writing the script...

Why did only Jason and his buddy go to Lucas and Erica when he had a whole team? Were the other guys just watching tv?

Vecna survived being transported to another reality and being hit by lightening so much that his skin peeled off, but can't handle Steve and Robin throwing a molotov at him? Or a shotgun? Really?

Did they leave Eddie's body in the upside down? Why is nobody mourning him besides his uncle and Dustin? I thought Mike, Lucas, Steve, Nancy, Robin and even Erica cared.

So El can bring people back from the dead now? That's not telekinesis, that's Mary Sue magic. What's next? She can share her powers with anyone she wants and then they can make people fly with the jerk of a wrist?

We still don't know why the upside down is stuck on the moment Will was taken. With the way this was brought up in volume 1 it really seemed like this would be answered in volume 2. But of course not, because Will Byers just kept getting sidelined in every way possible.

How come it was leaked that 5 people would die in volume 2 but the only important characters who died were Brenner (papa) and Eddie. Max died but she was brought back to life because apparently Eleven can do that now. That's not 5 is it? Or did they count the people in that helicopter who were trying to shoot Eleven?

Were we supposed to care about Brenner's death???? With how the cemra kept focusing so much on him? I was glad to watch him go!!

The timeskip of 2 full days in the middle of the climax???? Wtf was that??????

Mike being a complete asshole to Will these past 2 seasons was just for no reason then? He is JUST an asshole??

Were Robin, Nancy and Steve just choking on those vines for like 15 minutes or was the time where Eleven struck Vecna actually a lot shorter than that?

They actually forgot Will's birthday, I hoped they were just joking but they really forgot. He was the only character with a canon birthday within the series (until they talked about Dustin's) but clearly they care so little about Will that his entire existence is forgotten.

Wasn't the upside down toxic? Why is everyone just fine inhaling the shit?

The queerbait. No, gay people didn't bait themselves. Netflix, the Duffers, and the actors were actively promoting Byler and hyping up Will's sexuality when in reality Byler is just doomed, not just as a romance but as friendship as well. And Will did not explicitly come out to anyone. People are STILL in denial that he's gay and that's exactly why you make characters come out instead of keeping it "up to interpretation wink wink"

Will calling Mike the heart of their group yet Mike's the one who broke their party up the most.

Mike saying he instantly fell in love with Eleven when they met, as if he didn't tell her to shut up, go away and stop being weird back then.

Mike saying his life started on the day he met Eleven, the same day Will went missing, in his face. When Mike said before that the best thing he had ever done was befriend Will in kindergarten.

So did Vecna create the Mind Flayer or did it already exist? Cause if Vecna created it that's so goddamn lame and it adds no new mystery.

The continuous stereotypes and suffering/deaths of outcasts, poor people, queer people and people of color. One black character plays basketball and the other is a sassy one-liner. The brown guy is a funny weed man with barely to no relevancy to the plot. One lesbian gets a lazy background ship with a girl who is an exact copy of herself and the gay character is living in a painful unrequited love story and used as fuel for the main straight couple, without even being given a canon coming out scene. All this while the straight couples get together and have tons of moments together. Eddie who is poor, is seen as a cultist, dies and nobody besides 2 people mourn his death. Max, another poor character who had already lived through trauma and abuse, dies, gets brought back to life, is now comatose, probably crippled, and maybe permanently blind.

Will's endless suffering. He just can't ever be happy can he? Wtf is wrong with the writers...

Did the Russian crew just end up at Hoppers cabin like that in 2 days? No problems whatsoever? Wow that's convenient.

Hopper hugs Mike but not his new stepsons?

Not one, not two, but three jokes about Hopper once having been fat because he's lost weight in the prison.

Comments had some great additions and I came up with some more too so here's more:

Nobody showed up to Lucas' game when he had a very valid reason to want to play, and it was never brought up again. They all stood him up.

Eddie's death was so rushed and predictable. I saw it coming as soon as he said his whole "I'm a coward I run away I'm not a hero" speech. It's typical "I'm a coward so I'll die a hero" foreshadowing which is overused and just horrible. And in the end he didn't even save anyone, it was completely unnecessary. Eddie deserved to live.

Eleven not being able to win the final fight until she got validation from her boyfriend. Why was she not allowed to do this by herself?

The military watching the pizza van drive off and then do nothing about it? I thought they were experts at tracing and tracking, but nope, they just gave up after Eleven escaped the underground lab.

Just the Cali crew being sidelined so much when they once were such interesting characters (besides Argyle)

Steve saying he always loved Nancy and never moved on despite him telling Robin in season 3 that he didn't like her anymore. Let Steve move on and stop having Nancy jump from boy to boy, hurting them both in the process.

Just a nitpick but the sound design was so overly dramatic at times? Like Brenner LITERALLY snapped a pencil and the sound design was like ☄️💥🔥

Tell me what I missed cause I'd love to add it on this shit list.

[musclesandhammering]

Every Single Issue I Have With S*lki (It’s Not Just The Selfcest)

Here goes. I threatened to post this a few days ago and never did, but I just saw a s*lki stan Twitter account claim that Loki caring about Sylvie more than the whole multiverse was a Good And Romantic thing and it pushed me over the fucking edge, so now you all have to read this. I’ve divided it into categories cause there’s just THAT much.

OOC Bullshit

• First and foremost, no amount of mental gymnastics you do will ever make me believe that this specific Loki- the one that just invaded New York, that just came off a year of Thanos Torture, that just got done being influenced by the sceptre, that was literally in the middle of a crisis already, and then on top of that went through all the trauma of Ep 1- would even be worried about a romantic relationship. That would be the furthest thing from his mind. Go back and watch how he acted in Avengers- you think that guy would abandon his previous mission to become a snivelling simp for a girl he’d just met 3 days prior? Yeah, there’s no universe in which that makes sense.

• “It’s very in character for Loki to fall in love with himself lololol-“ NO, it’s literally not. Out of all the characters in the mcu, I don’t think I can think of anyone that genuinely hates themselves more than Loki. He even referred to all his other male variants as “monsters” and said meeting them was “a nightmare” in this series. He’s got so much self-loathing, plus the fact that he genuinely thinks himself to be an evil backstabbing scourge- so there’s no evidence at all suggesting that he would ever develop a fondness for, or even be inclined to trust, another version of himself, after only knowing them for 3 days.

• Building on that, the whole concept of Loki falling in love with a version of himself just feeds into the annoying ass misconception that he’s a narcissist. No matter which way you stack it, he’s not. If you’re referring to NPD, he doesn’t fit the criteria, and if you’re saying “narcissist” just as a slang term meaning “selfish and arrogant”, that still doesn’t accurately describe him. But when creators like Waldron and Herron do things like having him fall in love with himself, it makes it so much easier for casual viewers to think that he is.

Shitty LGBT Rep

• It’s kinda sus that Loki’s are allegedly genderfluid and yet the only female-presenting variant we see (and apparently the only female-presenting variant there is, cause the male Loki’s all seemed unfamiliar with the concept) is treated as some kind of mind-bogglingly special paradox. Also very sus that, out of all the Loki variants, the one our Loki falls in love with just so happens to be the only female one. What a coincidence.

• The fact that the creators of the show went around bragging about Loki’s bisexuality and Marvel purposefully (lbr) allowed stories about Loki possibly having a male love interest to circulate, specifically enticing queer viewers to watch the show (you know, the definition of queerbaiting), and then instead of having a male love interest (Loki was the first queer main character, so it was the perfect opportunity) they gave us *gestures to this dumpster fire* this… it’s just a middle finger to LGBT fans. The fact that they would rather have this relationship with all its myriad of problems than have a gay relationship is just……. Very telling.

• While him being with a woman obviously doesn’t refute his bisexuality, the fact that they showed/talked about him being interested in 3 different women (flight attendant, Sylvie, Sif) and never even hinted at him being attracted to a man, definitely makes it seem like they were trying to cover up his bisexuality to smooth things over with the more homophobic viewers. You know? It’s like “I know you’re pissed that we sorta confirmed Loki as bi, so we promise we’ll never mention it again! Or even hint at it! As a matter of fact, we’ll give him lots of female lovies and make him seem as straight as possible! That’ll take your mind off of that horrible crumb of queer rep, right? Please please please keep giving us your money!!!”

• Aside from all the other issues, at its core, the biggest reason why I think I’m so irritated with s*lki is that it took one of the most interesting, complex, and diverse characters in cinema atm and squished him into a tired ass unnecessary heteronormative subplot…. Like literally every. single. other. protagonist. ever. Loki is such a unique character, and it’s so so so incredibly disappointing that they stuck him into that same boring cookie cutter romance that happens to every other character in every other movie I’ve ever seen. It’s a disservice, and it’s honestly just not compelling or entertaining at all.

Thematic Issues Galore

• His arc didn’t need a romance. With anyone. It was unnecessary and it didn’t make sense plot-wise. In fact, one of the reasons he was my fav prior to this was because he was the only big-name mcu character whose story wasn’t muddied-up by a romance that didn’t need to be there. So much for that.

• He wasn’t emotionally ready for a romantic relationship with anyone. Hell, just a genuine friendship would’ve been pushing it for him at this point. He was in such a bad state that any relationship he got into would’ve been toxic and unhealthy for both him and the other person, and it doesn’t make sense why the writers would want to put him in one when there were so many cons and essentially no pros (other than “Uwu aren’t they cute together”).

• Sylvie’s character in general was unnecessary and Loki’s character was robbed just by her being there. The whole show became about her post-Ep 2. They spent most of the time giving her backstory, building her up, telling us how awesome she is, trying to convince us to like her, etc when what they really needed to be doing was building Loki up- cause I gotta say, if I had to describe TVA!Loki in a few words, they would be Flat, Boring, and Weak.

• The romance overtakes the plot. They spend time portraying their supposed connection that could’ve been spent adding depth and complexity to literally any of the characters. They make the big Nexus Event them giving each other googly eyes on Lamentis when it could’ve been so many other way more profound things that speak to the fundamental nature of Loki’s. They have the climax of the finale be “oh no she betrayed him to kill He Who Remains” when it could’ve been something way more compelling (Loki having a moral crisis over whether or not to kill HWR, Loki contemplating the state of the multiverse and weighing the pros and cons of freedom vs order, Loki looking into some What If situations and getting emotional about what could’ve been regarding his family, Loki realising the gravity of HWR’s offer and finally coming to terms with how important he is to the universal cycle, etc etc). The entire plot suffered in favour of a romance that half of us didn’t even want.

• It essentially reduced all of Loki’s potential character growth down to “He did it for his crush.” He seemed to at least have some motivations of his own in Ep 1-2 (feeble as they were) but after Sylvie showed up in Ep 3, literally every action he took was just him being a simp for her. Why did he lie in the interrogation? To try to protect Sylvie. Why did he fight the minutemen and Timekeepers? To survive kinda, but mostly cause it was important to Sylvie. Why did he get pruned? Cause he got distracted trying to confess his crush to Sylvie. Why did he try to get out of The Void? Cause he thought Sylvie needed him. Why did he stay in The Void? Cause Sylvie was staying. Why did he try to enchant Alioth? Cause Sylvie told him to. Why did the multiverse get cracked open, leading to an infinite number of Kangs waging war on all of existence? Cause Loki didn’t wanna hurt Sylvie in their fight at the Citadel and then get distracted by her kissing him. It’s uninteresting and honestly pretty embarrassing.

• Throughout their “relationship arc” the writers do their absolute damndest to convince us that we should like Sylvie more than Loki. And you know what? It’s the most hypocritical shit I’ve ever seen. They preach and preach about how Sylvie’s life has been so difficult/we should feel bad for her/she had it so bad/poor poor sylvie/she had it SO much worse than pampered prince Loki…. But then they never even touch on any of Loki’s trauma of hardships (the ones that have been ignored for literally 3 movies now). They frame Sylvie as a good person and a Freedom Fighter after she spent literal decades/centuries mass-murdering brainwashed TVA agents and showing exactly zero remorse for it….. but then they make it their mission to constantly remind us that Loki is a terrible person and constantly put him in situations where he’s forced to acknowledge his wrongdoings/show remorse/admit to how “evil” he is for being a mass murderer for like 2 years. They show him on-screen having a wider range of powers than her, and perpetuate his whole shtick of being a “master manipulator” or whatever….. But then they make Sylvie “the brawn” more competent, intelligent, and physically capable than him. Tell me how it’s a good thing for a ship to be so narratively biased toward one character.

Missed Opportunities

• If they absolutely had to have a romance subplot, then they could’ve paired Loki with one of the characters that have already been established OR one of the characters that were a big part of the whole TVA storyline anyway. It would’ve been so interesting if they’d revealed that Loki had a history with some of the players from previous films (Sif and Fandral both come to mind). It also would’ve been really interesting if they’d given Loki a love interest that actually had some allegiance to the TVA as a whole (Mobius maybe, but not necessarily. It also could’ve been Renslayer or B-15). Hell, imo it would’ve been cool if they’d followed through with that “See you again someday” line that he said to the flight attendant in Ep 1. ALL of these characters have way more chemistry with him than Sylvie, and they were also already relevant to the plot without wasting half the show to give background info on them.

• If they absolutely had to have a hetero-presenting love story involving an enchantress-type figure, then there’s a whole Enchantress (Amora) that was actually Loki’s love interest in the comics. Plus, fans have been screaming for Amora to appear in the mcu for years. Plus, Tom literally pitched an Amora/Loki storyline way back in 2012-13. Also, Lorelei (another enchantress) is also one of Loki’s love interests in the comics, and she already exists in the mcu (she was on Agents of SHIELD). There were several different established characters for them to choose from. Creating a whole knew amalgamation of a character and going with the “she’s a Loki variant” storyline was just completely unnecessary and made no sense.

• They completely robbed us of a Chaos Twins dynamic. Had they handled Sylvie better and not forced her and Loki to smooch, the two of them could’ve had a really really complex and interesting sibling relationship. Loki could’ve stepped into Thor’s shoes and sort of used that new role to gain some self importance, and Sylvie could’ve finally had somebody to look out for her/teach her magic/be there for her. It would’ve been very aesthetically pleasing, the vibes would’ve been out of this world, it would’ve been way more profound than this bs, and frankly it would’ve been much more entertaining to watch.

• Loki’s relationship (read: obsession) with Sylvie completely overshadows all Loki’s other relationships in the show. Loki and Mobius were literally the focal point of the series in Ep 1-2, but after Sylvie showed up in Ep 3, they barely had any interactions with each other, and Mobius pretty much faded to the background entirely. Loki had the beginnings of a pretty interesting antagonistic relationship with Renslayer (with her wanting him pruned, then arguing with Mobius that he couldn’t be trusted), but after Sylvie showed up the dynamic shifted to focus on the history between her and Ravonna. Loki and B-15 started off very badly and openly disliked each other throughout Ep 1-2, and then in the end of Ep 2, Loki showed a little bit of concern for her when she was possessed, hinting that they might be inching toward a reconciliation- especially considering how obvious it was that Loki was gonna uncover the TVA’s sins eventually. There was so much potential for him to be the one to give her her memories back and convince her to change sides, but no, of course that honor went to Sylvie. In fact, after Sylvie showed up, Loki and B-15 never even spoke to each other again.

Various S*lki Fails

• If they were trying to convince us that this affection was mutual, they completely failed. There’s nothing I’ve seen that even hints at Sylvie feeling the same way about Loki that he does about her. At most, I’d say she has a slight endearment to him. She finds him likeable and she’s grudgingly fond of him, but she definitely isn’t in love with the guy. Maybe she thinks he’s cute and hopes that he gets out of this mess alright, but her mission obviously comes before him- whereas, it’s been confirmed multiple times that Loki cares about her above anything else. She doesn’t trust him, she looks at him like he’s an incompetent fool half the time, she shows little to no reaction during most of his confession moments, and she kissed him as a means to distract him so that she could get him out of her way. Look, all I’m saying is, when you get into a relationship where one of you is way more invested than the other, it never ends well.

• This goes without saying for a lot of us, but the selfcest is just straight up odd and cringey. If you’re cool with that sort of thing, fine! People can ship what they want! But don’t pretend it’s not at least a little bit uncomfortable. Yes, I know they’re not technically siblings so it’s not technically incest, and they’re also not technically the exact same person, but they’re similar enough that it makes things weird. And yes I know selfcest can’t happen in real life, so there’s no way to judge it morally, but neither can most of the other stuff that happens in these shows/movies (the Snap, Loki destroying jotunheim, superhero with powers being held accountable, mind control) and yet we still find ways to judge their morality, because they all mirror real-world events. (The snap= genocide; Loki destroying Jotunheim= bombing other countries; superhero accountability= weapons accountability; mind control= grooming and coercion). And lbr the closest real-world mirror to two versions of the same person (who may or may not share DNA, family, backgrounds, physical and emotion characteristics) being romantically involved with one another is incest. And you can be ok with that if you want- that’s your prerogative- but don’t get pissy just cause a lot of us are squicked out by it.

• The whole mirror metaphor (learning self love via each other) thing just fell completely flat. First of all, having Loki learn to love himself by looking at someone who mirrors him did not, in any way shape or form, require them to be romantically involved. But they were. Of course. Secondly, the creators have contradicted themselves so many times on whether Loki and Sylvie are the same or not, that it doesn’t even really register to the viewer that the mirroring thing was what they were going for. Finally, Loki and Sylvie are shown to have so little in common- and to have only the most bare minimum of similarities personality-wise- that it doesn’t even make sense that Loki would “learn to love himself through loving her”. Like? They’re nothing alike. So how would he make the connection that he himself is actually pretty cool, based on her alone? There’s virtually nothing in her that reflects him.

• I know the objective of the entire show was to convince us of how awesome and unique Sylvie is, but honestly her relationship with Loki just did the opposite. A hallmark of a Mary Sue is having her constantly upstage the male lead, and then having him instantly fall madly in love with her anyway. And that’s.. exactly what happened here. Everything they’re doing to try to force her character to be more stan-able is really just forcing her to look more like their self-insert OC. Which is exactly what she is. It would’ve been so much more satisfying if she didn’t have to try so hard to look cool, if they didn’t have to try so hard to make her backstory tear-inducing, if they didn’t have to turn our protagonist into a snivelling simp just to prove how incredible she supposedly is. Very much #GirlBoss energy and we all know how performative and cheap that is.

• The entire thing was too rushed, there was too little build-up, and it was nowhere near believable. As stated above, it’s ridiculously unlikely that Loki would canonically even be interested in Sylvie, and this show did nothing to explain why he was. He just suddenly was. There was nothing they showed us as viewers that would justify a guy as closed-off and preoccupied as Loki falling head-over-heels for a girl he just met. Their was no explanation, no big revelation, no reasoning, it just… kinda happened. And I’m also severely skeptical of any love story that has the characters go in this deep after only 3 45-minute episodes of exposition.

I’m sure there’s other stuff, so if anyone thinks of anything, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to add it. Tagging @janetsnakehole02 @raifenlf @natures-marvel and @brightredsunset800 for expressing interest. This is all your faults.

[xxravewavexx]

Ich habe 227 Mal im Jahr 2022 etwas gepostet

Das sind 194 more posts als 2021!

114 Einträge erstellt (50%)

113 Einträge gerebloggt (50%)

Blogs, die ich am häufigsten gerebloggt habe:

@binch-i-might-be

@talkin-bout-dead-folks-main

@xxravewavexx

@drowning-lessonz

@quillsink

Ich habe 134 meiner Einträge im Jahr 2022 getaggt

Nur 41% meiner Einträge hatten keine Tags

#rey's talking – 67 Einträge

#punk – 15 Einträge

#punk diy – 10 Einträge

#reys talking – 9 Einträge

#diy punk – 8 Einträge

#alternative – 6 Einträge

#my chemical romance – 4 Einträge

#alternativ – 4 Einträge

#patch pants – 3 Einträge

#metal family – 3 Einträge

Längstes Tag: 115 characters

#the way she listens to all of your stories and every thing you say because she knows that you listen to get as well

Meine Top-Einträge im Jahr 2022:

#5

Making new patches! (Protect Jews and punch NZS,no means fuck off,black lives matter, they /them ,the earth is our mother,who would Jesus bomb,people over Profit,my chemical romance,get scared,black veil brides) mcr,get Scared and black veil brides are bands. The earth is our mother means global warming and that we should protect the earth. Who would Jesus bomb? Is about and against war etc. And the others are self explanatory I think

25 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 11. Februar 2022

#4

I wanna make another battle jacket but this time.instead of denim I'll use a leather jacket (if I can find one... eBay Kleinanzeigen didn't have one in my area (I like to try them on before I buy clothes) so I'll have to wait... maybe I can find one at like thrift stores in my area. I have the desire to create.

32 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 11. Juni 2022

#3

TW: F-SLUR, PEDO & HOMOPHOBIA MENTION Hey metal family creators you B*STARDS, why did you make lif say the f-slur? Like come on! Half of the fandom is gay! In the Russian version she said: "asshole! I hope a horn gets stuck in your ass" (or something like that I don't speak that language) but the translation was so much worse! She said: "f-slur! I hope a horn grows in your butt" which is just bad. And lif is a selfinsert of the adult creator AND DEE'S LOVEINTEREST! As far as I've heard. Dee is 15!. I didn't know you are homophobic and p*dophilic! You are making me consider leaving this fandom...

Edit: I didn't know that neither are true BUT I do now,Due to the comment,the reblog and the private message. Thanks to you three.i take my Insult and accusations back.

32 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 2. Februar 2022

#2

So this is my patch jacket, Tore the sleeves off because they were annoying :) there are two blank white patches and I wanted to write two band names on it but haven't...

49 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 9. Februar 2022

Meine #1 des Jahres 2022

I have the strong desire to buy another second hand jacket and put patches on it.

64 Anmerkungen – Gepostet 2. Mai 2022

Hol dir deinen Tumblr-Jahresrückblick 2022 →

[perilpetrol]

My newest hyper-fixation; creating a home brew dnd campaign based off of the little known rpg gem, kingdoms of Amular: reckoning.

[LONG POST, MOBILE]

It makes me unnecessarily angry that this game isn’t more popular. So I’m gonna rant about why it should be.

1. The Reckoning system is the most satisfying and unique combat mechanic in an open work rpg I’ve ever played

2. The combat in general is fluid and fun without being too easy and you can easily become overwhelmed in battle as enemies all have differing attack patterns and can swarm you from any angle, leading to fast, frantic fights that are challenging as well as so cool

3. The leveling and fate card systems are complex and work together to make each character build unique and personalized to your play style. And unlike other rpgs that were more widely acclaimed at the time (*cough* Skyrim *cough*) you are never stuck with any set path and can change your mind at any time in the game

4. The junk items system makes it easy to sort and mass sell any items you have that aren’t useful or are clogging up your inventory.

5. Quests are carried enough that even minor ones never feel like chores or busy work

6. “I’m real, you must be drunk”

“Oh I am”

7. The main villain is voiced by Winey the Pooh

8. Removable helmets

9. The armor and weapon designs are so cool, and the female armor is functional and I love it so much

10. Alyn Shir

11. The game is so pretty and the art style is so good, why would anyone want to look at Skyrim’s brown and grey and white when you can have this!!!

12. The lore of this game is so rich and interesting that you could write a full blown novel with just the lodestones, journals, and hidden stuff in this game

13. Alyn. Shir.

14. The siege of Mel Senshire is the best quest line I have ever played, I could never forget it, and it still makes me cry

15. Agarth is my dad and I would never let anything happen to him

16. The accents are so bad they somehow loop around and become perfect

17. Who needs dragons when you can become as god?

18. You can join ever faction in the game at once

19. You can betray every faction in the game and they will all try to kill you

20. You can betray the Warsworn and honestly, you really should

21. THE HOT ELF LADY WANTS TO B O N E

22. Alyn. Fucking. Shir.

23. Wolf trapped in a mans body

24. Hi, would you like to hurl disks of flaming metal at your opponents with great speed? Chakrams

25. This man has big himbo energy and I want to hug him

26. There is not romance but 2 out of the 3 characters you flirt with are girls and that seems pretty gay

27. Everyone else is dressed appropriately for battle except for Alyn Shir and that seems very in character

28. The expansions are 10/10 and you can have wolf pets in one

29. “You will fall before the night of the tuatha!

“Who are you again?”

30. Alyn Shir

She could murder me and I would thank her

All right that is all

[lilaclaly]

I posted 401 times in 2022

12 posts created (3%)

389 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@clarabosswald

@tonkshamsandwich

@dog-nova

@christophernolan

@manny-jacinto

I tagged 351 of my posts in 2022

Only 12% of my posts had no tags

#sw - 99 posts

#star wars - 56 posts

#kenobi series - 52 posts

#stranger things - 51 posts

#obi wan kenobi - 48 posts

#hotd - 38 posts

#stranger things 4 - 37 posts

#house of the dragon - 36 posts

#anakin skywalker - 34 posts

#obikin - 34 posts

Longest Tag: 90 characters

#since 2011 ive been telling my pjo friends that i always like percy w rachel than annabeth

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

all i want in this season is main character protagonist gay™ william byers

and ofc byler

70 notes - Posted May 25, 2022

#4

there is more than 24k fics of merthur on ao3, so there must be one where merlin just disappear for a long time and arthur freaks out and a lot of things happens in between and arthur realizes how in love with merlin he is

79 notes - Posted November 27, 2022

#3

you know whats funny to me? people think that el is the main protagonist of stranger things bc shes the one with powers and that can stop the monsters from the upside down.

but for me is like not that at all. for me the real protagonis always was will byers. everything started bc of him. sure, el opened the portals two times, but thats all that she did. she opened the portals for the monsters (and that wasnt her fault at all.) but everything else that happened it was a consequence of will’s disappearance. el wouldnt have meet the party if it them went out looking for will. she would be probably capture eventually and went back to the lab.

the main clue for me its that how the fuck a twelve years old kid escaped and survived for a week on that toxic environment, and everyone else was killed right after they got there? 

for me, will always had powers but they manifested when he was in the upside down. i mean how did he communicated with joyce if the UD was stuck in time on the exact day that he went missing? the thing with the lights if i remember correctly was one or two days after he went to the UD. and why didnt the demogorgon attack and killed him right after they went to the UD? why it saw him biking and went for him when he wasnt even bleeding?

and then in season 2 when will was possessed by the mindflayer he said that the mindflayer didnt want him, but everyone else. i doesnt make sense if u want to use someone someone to get to others and let only him alive. most villans use and then get rid of the person they use. 

for me will byers was specifically targeted from the beginning bc he always had powers and for some reason the mindflayer wants him. its like what dustin said about vecna and the mindflayer.

vecna its the 5 star general and the mindflayer its the boss.

el is the 5 star general all this time and will is the real boss.

did yall get what i mean?

168 notes - Posted June 26, 2022

#2

i think is actually quite funny that people are realizing just now that will is gay and in love with mike. just shows how much there are subtext throughout the whole show and people are not really watching it

384 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

forget about the romance aspect of byler and think about the platonic side of it. imagine hearing your best friend of 10+ years saying to a girl that the day his life started was after he met her and that was the exact day of your disappearance and that was the cause of your traumatic and tragedy childhood.

ngl i would stop being friends with him. that is just a shitty friend i would be pissed and cut him out my life.

582 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[theyanderespecialist]

(Questions) Can Alastor Be Sexual?

(WARNING ASEXUALITY IS NOT A SEXUALITY THAT DEFINES PEOPLE WHO ARE ASEXUAL AS THE SAME THIS IS JUST ME TAKING THE FACTS OF ALASTOR CHARACTER BIOLOGY AND DEMONOLOGY TO MAKE A VERSION OF WHAT HE BE LIKE AS ASEXUAL

SIDE NOT THIS IS FANFICTION THIS IS JUST TO ADDRESS THE HATEFUL THINGS I BEEN TOLD ABOUT MAKING ALASTOR HAVE SEX

HOPEFULLY THIS EXPLAINS TO YOU ALL MY PROCESS AND THAT IS NOT A DISRESPECT TO THE ASEXUAL COMMUNITY

THIS IS FICTION I JUST HOPE THIS HELPS YOU UNDERSTAND BETTER

and of course you are entitled to you preference you dont like Alastor as a sexual character but still want him yandere you can request platonic Alastor x reader scenarios and headcanons and so on

But once Again this is not disrespect to anyone just a take on how I work with Alastor being Sexual I know I am not explaining this well I mean How Alastor is sexual but still Asexual... I think Anyway just reade and enjoy this over explain explaination

[Hello My Sexy Readers, I am here with a Question and grivence a lot of people have with Fanfiction Alastor From Hazbin Hotel. Can He Be Sexual Or Should He Be Sexual.

That is what we are here to dive into today lets strap in and do this!

Now the Facts

1: Alastor Is Asexual

2: It Is Fanfiction

3: Vivzie the Creator Of Alastor has approved shipping as long as it is not harmful

These are the three main facts and cannon and such.

Now first what is Asexuality as some people have assumed it means a person does not enjoy sex at all.

A: Asexual is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or a low interest in sexual activity. Some people consider asexuality to be their sexual orientation, and others describe it as an absence of sexual orientation. ... Others are aromantic — that is, they feel no romantic attraction to other people.

Now we do not know if Alastor is Aromantic or not so that will be set up for a later chapter.

As it says above it does not mean that Alastor Cannot Feal Sexual Desire and It Does Not Mean that he does not enjoy it if he did find someone worthy enough to be with

So I am going to use Yandere Alastor as a good Example as it can touch on a few point.

.Alastor Is A Demon a deer demon at that: I think that if he goes by biology which some of the fandom has gone with is Alastor having a rut and deer season. So by Biology he does have moments in which he needs to lack of a better term breed. (Even though sinner demons cannot have children in canon)

.Alastor with feelings?: Now this is why I used Yandere Alastor as it is a good field but he would be very possessive in my eyes at least even if he was not yandere he is old fashion and if he found someone worthy (Or as a yandere found his Darling) he would be more so not willing to let them go and I believe their is the point he can get jealous it can be from small to big but on the extreme note which most yanderes are alastor would want to claim and mark his love and there is two way I believe he go about doing this

Cutting/Bitting/And physical markings

Or

Claiming as a lover and leaving bite marks and bruises to show that he or she or they were claimed by the Radio Demon

okay and a third selling their soul to alastor so then he litterally owns their entire being as his

now back to the sexuality and sex

So yes Alastor will be put in the mood from a rut (The rut could be consider just random arousal which does happen rarely though) and possibly a mating season.

Now this is not saying Alastor will be like sexual a lot or even a little.

I believe that he would like the build up to sex not even the forplay get that out of her not even taking off clothes (Yeets that out as well)

No I am talking the slow burn (Not as Romance) no I am talking about the "Leave something to the imagination" Classy but Sensual type of the thing like the long kisses and lightest of touches.

He will have to initiate them though he would love seeing the reaction of his love if he is romantic as he feeds off it.

for example you are wearing a dress from his period and look of perfection this will excite him more than seeing you naked most of the time

like seeing you naked he may or may not be uncomfortable because of him being a gentleman and so on.

No comes the last thing Asexual X Sexual partner.

So Lets your writing a fanfic about Alastor X Angel Dust

(Yeah The creator approved shipping as long as it is not harmful and such)

So Alastor rather he is good in bed or not can choose to have sex with Angel dust or any sexual partner and if it was someone he truly loved he would do it as he can enjoy sex but it is just not his cup of tea most days

Asexuals are valid and do not need to be "Fixed" But they are also able to be Sexual

I brought this up because this is one of the main Reasons people dig into me about Alastor what I have to say

"I respect anyone of Asexuality and will try to write Alastor when he is Asexual in my stories better to fit him you all do not have to be fixed and you are perfect the way you are. I write alastor as a yandere which triggers the things above though I may not always be clear in my writing of Alastor because I have a lot to improve still. Anyways I hope this does lighten things up for everyone. And Bless You All"

Stay Sexy all of my friends!]

(Side not this is fanfiction if you want to write Alastor with a different sexuality it is just fine, just label and tag your stuff accordingly. So if Gay alastor aint someone thing? They can move on

and you yeah you the haters who say I don't like this type of story or how you wrote the character so I am going to harress and bully you yeah fuck you! No one one if forcing you to read it so fuck off all you kevin and karens and let people who actually enjoy it read it you stuck up baby dick prudes!]

[nvrlostword]

cookie run kingdom au bc i’m out of control

ok first of all the kid cookies legally cannot go on missions

chili pepper (though she generally hates rules) established this rule after stage 2-18 when she saw the jelly worm get turned into a dragon and thought maybe this wasn’t the best environment for children

soon after this snow sugar and alchemist run into espresso and are like “wow! a magic cookie! will you come live in our kingdom?!”

espresso agrees because he’s a big softie for kids deep down because he’s been roaming around studying magic for a little while now and it would be nice to have a place to settle down and maybe start up a coffee magic school

of course as soon as they reach the kingdom gate, who else would be there but madeleine cookie

espresso: i need to leave immediately

espresso does consider booking it but alchemist seems so eager to learn magic from him and how could he break his promise to snow sugar to live in her kingdom

meanwhile madeleine, who’s been in the kingdom for a little while now, is surprised to see that one guy from the republic again so he waves cheerfully at espresso and espresso just. walks past him. not even acknowledged

espresso hopes that he won’t have to interact with madeleine much and he can just ignore him. unfortunately, the only house available is the one next to madeleine’s (because madeleine’s house gives off a blinding aura that makes it hard for other cookies to sleep at night, thus no one wants to live next to him except angel cookie, who’s his neighbor on the other side)

regret.png

at DAWN the next day madeleine’s at espresso’s door. espresso (regrettably) answers after like two and a half hours of madeleine standing there at his door, knocking

madeleine asks espresso to join the exploration team and espresso slams the door in his face

madeleine continues to talk to espresso through the door and espresso makes a note to ask the sugar gnomes to install a thicker door

the only reason espresso eventually agrees is because snow sugar asks him to

so when espresso joins, he’s not terribly surprised that the team is a mess (because why else would madeleine, of all people, ask him to join- he must have been desperate), but he didn’t expect it to be... well, as much of a mess as it was. we’ve got madeleine (strong but stupid), avocado (who’s okay at combat but really is a lot better at weaponsmithing), angel (who sometimes does healing magic but more often than not just focuses on making a glowing aura around madeleine), and vampire (does he even do anything???).

madeleine is so happy to have a cookie that’s competent in combat that he gives espresso one of those friendly pats on the back except he’s too overexcited and ends up knocking espresso over

espresso: *long sigh*

so a couple days later espresso is like “why tf is chili pepper cookie not on our combat team???”

turns out chili pepper and madeleine had a disagreement about the morality of stealing and chili pepper refused to do combat for the kingdom ever since

espresso comes in and smooths things over and chili pepper replaces vampire cookie in the exploration team, a change which makes everyone happier

then they meet rye cookie during the chilirye quests

episode 4 and the beginning of episode 5 are kind of rough for our exploration team bc they’re being chased by both licorice and rye cookie

but when they get to pomegranate village and rye hears the whole thing about dark enchantress cookie coming to take over the world, rye begrudgingly agrees to work with the team and avocado goes back to working at the kingdom forge

thus, an epic slow burn chilirye romance begins

the same thing has been happening with espresseleine but like stupidly slow

lore time: ok so in my mind dark magic and black magic are two different things. black magic is like the evil stuff dark enchantress uses, and it’s just one branch of dark magic (coffee magic would be another branch of dark magic), but a lot of cookies get the two confused and so dark mages are looked at as evil

what does this have to do with anything, you ask? well, it just so happens that madeleine and espresso did, in fact, meet once before when they were kids. madeleine was afraid of espresso bc he practiced “black” magic and ran away from him

madeleine doesn’t remember this interaction. espresso does.

it was espresso’s first experience with cookies mistaking him for a black mage, and it wouldn’t be the last, especially from light mages. this is part of why he’s so dedicated to his studies- to prove that not all dark magic is bad

so as the group travels together, they all realize some things. chili pepper and rye realize they’re not so different after all, espresso and madeleine (respectively) realize that dark and light magic (and each other) aren’t so bad, and angel cookie realizes she’s surrounded by gay cookies

everything goes great until 7-25. you remember 7-25 and the nightmare-ridden librarian? i do. i was stuck on that level for WEEKS

anyway. the party gets to the librarian and they are HURTING. chili pepper and rye end up confessing their love to each other- which says a lot about how dire the situation was if you could get two lesbians to confess their love

so madeleine’s at the front and the librarian is about to absolutely murder him when espresso says not today, not my man. espresso steps up and uses all of his remaining energy to send the librarian to a pocket dimension or something, but espresso ends up getting pulled in too and he’s assumed dead

he’s not dead he’s just kinda in suspended animation in the void but the others don’t know that

then the cookies go back to the kingdom bc they need healing, right? wrong. madeleine stays by where espresso disappeared and refuses to move bc what if he comes back, he was injured and when he comes back he’ll need someone there to help him even if he won’t admit it, he’ll be back any minute now

eventually chili pepper has to knock madeleine out just so they can get back to the kingdom

they’re all kinda depresso about losing espresso but none moreso than madeleine. he’s so depressed, in fact, that his light magic actually weakens

he’s still a part of the exploration missions but he’s just. distracted. in a way he wasn’t before. he’s more careless in battle, spends more time alone, and people have actually seen him without his smile

so while our crew is somewhere in episode 8, pomegranate cookie happens to go back to the library and finds the dark magic rift. unlike the cookies on our adventure team, she can actually open it

pomegranate, finding a weakened espresso in the rift: it’s free real estate

pomegranate is really impressed by espresso’s magical talent and takes him back to dark enchantress cookie (who has been summoned at this point and is starting to really cause chaos). dark enchantress wants to recruit espresso but he refuses because of a certain light magic idiot dark enchantress is the one who made people look at dark magic as evil

dark enchantress: ok *casts a mind control spell on espresso*

posesso the espresso

meanwhile, madeleine is doing the talking to himself thing that he does (in the MIDDLE of a battle) and he’s like “why would espresso do that, anyway? he’s never done anything selfless in his life!” and chili pepper just rolls her eyes and as she’s taking out an enemy and says “because he was in love with you”

*madeleine voice* HUH????????

everyone else thought madeleine and espresso were together bc they obviously had a thing for each other and that’s why madeleine was so distraught when espresso “died”

madeleine suddenly realizes he like likes espresso, which is unfortunate bc he’s “dead”

at this exact moment, white lily shows up claiming she was attacked by espresso

madeleine: THAT’S WONDERFUL NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!11!!

some distance away, possessed!espresso facepalms. “why did i just do that,” he wonders

so this is how they learn espresso is alive but possessed by dark enchantress. madeleine, however, only cares about the first part, bc at least there’s hope now that he can bring espresso home

his magic returns, even stronger than before, and the revitalized team plows through the rest of episode 8

so they finally get to dark enchantress and face her. dark choco decides to join the hero team bc pomegranate bullied him

which is really good for the team bc their front, madeleine, runs off to fight possessed!espresso alone at the beginning of the fight

espresso and madeleine would do a lot of sparring and stuff together and they were pretty evenly matched because of their different areas of strength, but this is different bc possessed!espresso is actively trying to kill madeleine and he has a black magic buff

possessed!espresso has the upper hand here, so he gets madeleine cornered and is about to deliver the final blow but he can’t

madeleine sees his hesitation and is like !!!!!! he’s still in there!!!!!!!

he also realizes there’s a pomegranate seed over the eye that espresso covers with his hair and realizes that must be what’s causing the possession spell (like in ovenbreak story run when wind archer gets possessed)

instead of fighting possessed!espresso, madeleine starts talking to him, reminding him of how they started out as kind of enemies, but how they became close friends. madeleine talks about how espresso made him realize that not all dark magic was evil, and there’s beauty in dark magic, too, all while slowly getting closer to possessed!espresso, who’s still poised and ready to deliver the killing blow

finally, madeleine asks possessed!espresso to trust him, and then he reaches out and touches the pomegranate seen over possessed!espresso’s eye. there’s a burst of light magic, the seed falls off, and espresso is back to normal

he and madeleine confess their feelings to each other then go help the others defeat dark enchantress cookie. the kingdom is saved, everyone is happy, and our two couples live in domestic bliss the end

[sand-worms]

How about all of ur widdle guys 🥺

I’m just gonna pick a few people left from LS I wanna do ok ty <3

Illuso

1. Only child from a relatively well-to-do family and kind of spoiled growing up. Didn’t have a lot of friends as a kid. He was pretty much allowed to pursue any interest he had growing up, but nothing ever really stuck with him. He didn’t have a lot of passion for anything and grew up sort of aimless. Kind of cocky and pompous to try and mask the fact that nothing really speaks to him and he’s very self conscious about it.

2. He likes white noise when he sleeps, typically rain or ocean sounds.

3. Slightly agoraphobic. Just sort of feels uneasy in crowds and would much rather be in his little mirror world to avoid them.

4. Doesn’t wear his hair fully down a lot because he kind of can’t stand it being in his face. He tries to wear it down and just gives up 20 minutes later and throws it in a bun.

5. He likes having typically feminine adjectives like pretty and beautiful used for him, but ONLY by people he fully trusts.

Prosciutto

1. The only thing he’s really self conscious about in terms of his appearance is his teeth, due to his overbite + tooth gap. He used to get picked on about it as a kid so he’s still a little touchy about it, though he tries not to make it obvious.

2. I think quite honestly he’s a little awkward when it comes to romance. He’s perfectly fine and in his element when it comes to casual affairs, but genuine romance is a little out of his wheelhouse and trips him up a bit.

3. Likes old Fred Astaire movies and they are his guilty pleasure. Shall We Dance is a favorite of his. Also a fan of The Gay Divorcee specifically for this scene.

4. A very good cook. He WOULD be able to bond with Formaggio over cooking good meals on tight budgets, were it not for the fact that the two of them physically cannot be in the kitchen together. Formaggio leaves too big of a mess to not drive Prosciutto up the wall, and Prosciutto’s nagging to pick up his dishes drives Formaggio insane. They can share the kitchen in peace only once in a blue moon.

5. Genuinely... he is old. Gets up at 6am and falls asleep on the couch in front of the TV at like 8:30pm while the news is on. He’s 35 and he’s already an old man. He would play solitaire with a real deck of cards instead of on the computer. I have to speak the truth he is ancient.

Ghiaccio

1. He also can’t stand mint like Pesci. His stand power is making stuff cold basically but he can’t stand that burning cold from mint in his mouth for more than like… 30 seconds.

2. His ADHD went largely ignored as a kid. His parents didn’t want to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with him outside of him just being an unruly, angry kid, and they thought that was just something they could punish him for until he grew out of it. (He didn’t)

3. He isn’t a natural stand user but he COULD have been. If he had been able to fully pursue ice skating like he wanted to White Album would’ve eventually manifested on its own. But because he couldn’t it took the arrow to draw it out of him.

4. His eyesight is so bad.... his prescription is SO strong... he’s like the kind of person that everyone who can see fine bugs him to try on his glasses and then when they put them on they go “WOAH how do you see out of these things?!”

5. He bites his ice cream. He needs to get at the good texture of the toppings in it and he hates when it melts and gets on his hands.

Sorbet

1. Knows how to throw knives and is very good at it.

2. He’s not really the type you want to have as a teacher. He has high expectations and he’s notoriously hard to impress. He’ll make you do whatever you’re learning over and over again until he’s satisfied with the result, and he’s not very encouraging or one to give out compliments unless he means it.

3. He is also so old. He and Prosciutto fall asleep on the couch while they watch the news together and everyone laughs at them for it.

4. I don’t know why, but I think he’d be very good at skipping stones for some reason. He has a talent for just looking at the ground and spotting the perfect stones for skipping. Idk.

5. Very quiet and observant. Really good at unnerving people because of it, and he’s fully aware of it. He uses it to his advantage a lot.

[casually-slips-into-coma]

An Essay (sort of) Explaining the Many Grievances I Have With Debbie Gallagher

Once again, Debbie is the fucking worst.

I’ve been wanting to write out my feelings towards her character for a fucking minute now just so that I have a full concise list. Now, I can talk about how Debbie has a constant need for attention, or how her character has become someone unrecognizable in the past few seasons, or how she’s a terrible mother, but what I really want to focus on is the center of my issues with her: her sexuality. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about to be a homophobic rant or anything. I just think her queer development has been written terribly and that should be addressed.

Too often I see people praising queer characters or relationships based solely on the fact that they are queer, and as a member of the community, I get it. I am also starved for representation. This, however, does not mean I’m going to settle for annoying, poorly written characters.

Why Make Debbie Queer?

The first thing I want to address is why suddenly develop a WLW storyline for her. Given that Debbie started as a little girl on the show, this gives the writers a lot of opportunity to give a character like that interesting storylines because she does not yet have a solid personality. It gives writers the liberty to take her story anywhere they want to without the constraints of established character because she, as a person, is still developing into adulthood. The show runners unfortunately dropped the ball with this.

From season 4 and onwards was when Debbie began showing interest in dating, sex, and romance having just turned the corner to puberty. From then up until season 9, she has shown exclusive interest in men. It isn’t until Alex the welder that Debbie deviates from this path. Alex is portrayed as a stud who confuses Debbie. I am inclined to believe that Debbie was originally attracted to her because she was masculine and therefore close enough to the people Debbie had previous experience with.

This arc was treated very much as Debbie experimenting with her sexuality, something that Alex also ends up realizing after Debbie tells her that having sex with a girl is “not that bad” and “like having sex with yourself” (S9E4). Once this storyline wrapped up (with Debbie shouting “you make me want cock again”) the writers powered through, adamant about Debbie now being a lesbian.

I have two theories as to why they’ve been fighting so hard for her queerness.

1) This was around the time that Cam was leaving Shameless. This obviously didn’t end up happening, but I was under the impression that the writers were freaking out at losing their token gay character and needed to fill that position. When Cam ended up staying, they were stuck with a queer Debbie storyline and decided to just go with it.

2) Shameless was planning on doing a WLW storyline regardless of Cam’s choice to leave and were originally going to give it to Fiona and her lesbian tenant that she had a close relationship and a lot of chemistry with, but Emmy Rossum wanted to move on from Shameless, and so they pivoted and gave the arc to Debbie, a character that was not supposed to be moved in that direction and so her new sexuality seemingly came out of nowhere. Fiona as a bisexual character would have made sense. Debbie still does not.

Shameless’s Awkward Relationship With Bisexuality

One of the biggest issues I have with Debbie is her insistence on being a lesbian. Lesbianism doesn’t come out of nowhere. Bisexuality, however, can. When you grow up being told that you are supposed to feel attraction to men, and you genuinely do feel attraction to men (which Debbie has expressed in past seasons/episodes) it’s easy to ignore your attraction to women and write it off as something that either isn’t a big deal, or something that isn’t there. It’s a lot more confusing than being strictly at one end of the spectrum. It would have been so much more believable if they had simply made Debbie bisexual. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t because the show has a history with bi erasure.

Bisexuality has been treated badly all throughout Shameless, used as a vengeful plot device back in the earlier seasons where Monica was only ever with women when unmedicated. Then in Season 7 when Ian’s boyfriend Caleb cheated on him with a woman (enforcing the stereotype of bisexuals being unfaithful) Ian, possibly acting out of anger or ignorance, said things like “only women are bisexual. When a man says he’s bisexual he’s really just gay”. The only semi positive bisexual representation on the show was Svetlana and Vee when they were in a poly relationship with Kev (though I also think that storyline wasn’t handled as well as it could’ve been).

This fight against the bisexual label in media is not a new one but it is also a harmful stance to take when writing a sexually fluid character. Debbie declaring that she is, in fact, a lesbian after waxing poetic about how Matty had a big dick and Derek had a great body and knew what he was doing is not the way to go. 

You could argue that Debbie, like many other queer women, is an unfortunate victim of compulsory heterosexuality, but frankly I don’t think the writers are well versed enough in queer theory for that to be a possibility.

Debbie as The White Feminist

Debbie is the pinnacle of white feminism. It’s an unfortunate thought that has occurred to me a few times throughout the show. She talks a big game as a man hater and someone after the equal treatment of women but she herself participates in a lot of problematic and anti feminist behavior.

For one, she r*ped Matty back in season 5 when he was blacked out and unconscious. This was a point in the story that was glossed over and one where she suffered no repercussions other than Matty no longer wanting to be around her. It was explained in the show that Debbie didn’t realize what she did was wrong until after she was explicitly told so because she was maybe 14 when it happened (not 100% on the age Shameless is very inconsistent about timelines). It was treated as somewhat of a punchline, something that Shameless has unfortunately done more than once when referring to male sexual assault (Mickey’s r*pe, Liam in season 10 ((i think??)) and in this latest season, Carl) but that is a different topic. 

There was also the time in which she lied to her boyfriend about being on birth control so she could trap him into a relationship with pregnancy (which also counts as r*pe!!) Good on Derek for getting out of that.

Debbie has also been pro-life in the past. Now I understand this was when Fiona was pressuring her into aborting her pregnancy, and as a pro choicer myself, I believe that Debbie was fully in her right to have bodily autonomy and go through with the pregnancy. This isn’t where the issue lies. It’s when Fiona finds out that she too is pregnant and tells Debbie that she wants an abortion that Debbie accuses her of “killing her baby”. Again, her behavior could be explained by her age given that Debbie was still a young teen during this time.

When her actions as a White Feminist become less excusable is mostly in the latest season. Her relationship with Sandy is one that I’m not really happy with because Debbie doesn’t deserve her.

Recently, it has been revealed that Sandy is actually married to a man and has a son. It’s explained that she was basically married off against her will at the age of 15 to a man twice her age. This implies that the product of the marriage, her son, was most likely conceived through dubious consent (or worse) at the hands of an adult when she was just a kid. Just because Debbie thinks that Sandy’s husband “seems nice” does not give her the right to try and make a victim of grooming feel bad about not wanting to be with her abuser. While I understand that Sandy’s son has no fault in how he came into the world, I’m still gonna side with Sandy when it comes to having to take care of a child she didn’t want and who is most likely a source of trauma for her. It’s not difficult to sympathize with Sandy and see that she’s clearly gone through something fucked up and Debbie, despite claiming to love and support her, AND despite her dumb white feminist arc about wanting equal pay and all that jazz, turns her back on the girls supporting girls aspect of feminism.

This isn’t even mentioning how shitty it was to just leave Franny by herself and assume that one of her siblings would take her to school and pick her up and stuff as if they don’t all have separate lives. She talks a lot about being a good mother but decided to “let off some steam” by fucking off to a gay bar to get loaded on coke and fuck a gay man (which wtf thats not a thing that really happens with casual coke but whatever I guess). Once she realized she fucked up, instead of taking responsibility she decided to paint herself as the victim as well as spew offensive bullshit about how she “probably has AIDS now” because of her sexual encounter with a gay man. No lesbian in their right fucking mind would ever say that because as members of the LGBTQ+ community, you are at least a tiny bit informed as to how devastating and tragic the AIDS crisis was for queer people.

(I also have an issue with how Debbie capitalized on her felony as a sex offender and her sexuality to start her Hot Lesbian Convict business but I think that’s enough said.)

Blame the writers

The show got almost an entirely new cast of writers after season 7 which is why the show feels more like a sitcom with low stakes and no consequences rather than a drama, but if there is a queer writer on the team it’s not very evident. Even the better half of the queer relationship story, Ian and Mickey, I don’t feel has really been done justice since the change in writers. It’s just become painfully obvious that the actress is a straight girl playing a gay character (not to mention I have never seen any chemistry between her and all of her female love interests). I don’t fault Emma Kenney (the actress) for this. I actually really like her as a person and I like the videos she makes about the cast and such, and I think she does her best with the script she’s given. My complaints with Debbie are targeted entirely towards the writers.

This brings me to my final point. I need them to let Debbie be alone. Her whole thing for the second half of the season has been that she clearly has abandonment issues and is afraid of being alone. It’s why she’s so adamant about keeping the house and fighting with Lip about it (I’m actually on Debbie’s side for that one but that’s besides the point). They had her and Sandy break up which leaves Debbie to spiral further into her loneliness. From a writing point of view, it makes sense to take this opportunity to give her an arc in which she can overcome that and feel comfortable with herself so that she can move on as an adult instead of jumping into a new relationship. This is especially true since this is quite literally the last season ever of the show and any character development needs to be wrapped up. Introducing a new character out of nowhere does not give the viewers enough time to actually get invested in the new relationship. It’s also unfair to Debbie’s character because her arc is going to feel incomplete.

Anyway,,,,,,uuuhhhhh,,,,,feel free to add on if u want lmao