#with a character limit and no tags i have literally no idea how to find anything on twitter bc

[macgargan]

If this is tumblr's layout moving forward, I am almost certainly quitting the site. I don't understand how @staff can say that the site is too confusing for users and then?? completely reverse the layout they've been using for years. I don't see what the purpose of this is other than to alienate users who have been on the site for years.

Can I get used to this layout? Yeah, probably. Do I want to stay on and support a site that is clearly going through an identity crisis without care or consideration for it's users or what made it unique in the first place? No.

I'm also @macgargan over on cohost, and I'm probably going to explore migrating over there. I would rather learn to use a new website than stay on a site that could radically change over night with no rhyme or reason.

[ocvelli]

whats this about the vacuum dust

Now I wonder if anyone who bought it has tried to huff the dust Or if they bought a ton to try using it as stuffing for those emery pincushions but instead of the usual strawberry it's an alastor nui

Have they tried marketing it as Alastor Branded Pocket Sand (but its vacuum dust)??? Would they do different flavors with different things mixed in? Like:

Nearby-the-Indoor-Bayou (has dead bugs crushed up and whole - dragonflies, damselflies, mosquitos, fireflies, etc mixed in like mixed nuts) flavor

Underneath-the-Bookshelf flavor (idk extra dusty???)

Dining-Table-Where-He-Chews-On-Raw-Venison-or-His-Victims-Bones (has bone crumbs? bone shavings or smth) flavor

Electronics-Hes-Crushed flavor (recommended for pocket sand purpose- probably would be sold out often for some reason)

Rust-From-His-Toolbox flavor (best seller for pocket sand purposes)

Exclusive! Limited Edition!! Radio-Tower-Vacuum-Dust (he probably keeps that place cleanest so it's not often that Niffty can get anything from there)

more notes/ideas in the tags too lazy to properly format them here (edit: ended up putting them here as screenshots since the others got cut off rip)

I think there is technically some ‘monetary’ gain from Alastor’s “patronage” of the hotel:

- he’s a (has-been) celebrity and he is using that to promote the hotel in its marketing to his established audience. Allegedly for free

Financially, he also uses his “skills” to save Charlie unnecessary expenses:

- plumbing, repairs, staff, administrative duties (assumption), catering (?)

- getting things done for “free”, aka pulling strings and limbs to avoid paying for tv air time

If Charlie had to pay for all these herself, the cost would be astronomical. Especially since the hotel is rent-free and run like a charity.

Alastor may not be making Charlie profit, but he is saving her money, which keeps their accounting in the black instead of red.

And then Lucifer showed up and demonstrated he can conjure anything 😂 I’d be salty on Charlie’s behalf too tbh

(referenced ask)

okay but like... these are all stuff alastor can actually proudly flex so he wouldn't have a problem with it (since he is voluntarily helping), now when it comes to husk niffty and angel dust making money off of alastor's room's fucking vacuum dust, lucifer taking art commissions containing sexy alastor drawings, niffty taking writing commissions for alastor x readers, that is when he loses his mind, especially when he finds out it's being sold to VOX of all people

[lookahotman]

Tied Up!

Sylus x Female reader

My contribution to the sub Sylus trope. I am so done with reading stuff where he would dominate the MC like come on y'all, have you not seen his cards, he would be the perfect Malewife.

tags: NSFW (It's not full on sex but whatever), Dom!reader, sub!character, sylus is handcuffed (from the bond moment),use of swear words(oh no!),dry humping, clothed sex

Also, this is the first time I have written anything, even smut, I promise I write better than this but you can also see this as me tweaking out cus there is not even sub love and deepspace content out there. Oh and this is also in first person POV cus I don't see that either.

One of these days I will surely kill Sylus.

The guy has made me run around for the past day just to find some stupid brooch I will need to attend the auction for protocores. He could have just put it in my hand and saved us both the trouble but no, everything seems to be a fucking game for him.

I have searched every nook and cranny, being caught by Sylus four times in the process, and yet that brooch seems to be nowhere. I am so exhausted, Time is a luxury right now, and I am running out of ideas for all the possible hiding spots

Does this brooch even exist or is he just fucking with me?

After Sylus throws me out of his room, claiming that he is 'going to bed', I just sit down and start doodling shit.

"Bastard! Now I get it. He never intended to make a deal with me in the first place!" I scream as I scratch the demonic sylus doodle I drew when suddenly Luke and Kieran start speaking from a distance, making me turn towards them.

"you're pulling your hair out over this, huh? If you want to do something, maybe we can help you." Oh please enlighten me, what could this guy possibly do? Steal the brooch from Sylus? He is literally his henchman. "what do you mean?" I ask, biting back my insults.

"if you want to conquer our boss's heart, you'll have to use a different approach. Luke then picks up a book and starts reading something "For some people, they get bored once they have everything. So only those who dare to challenge their authority can catch their interest."

Oh? Would Sylus really like that? Now I get curious as I walk over to the twins and take the book called 'Humanity and Conquer' from his hands.

"When you're dealing with such a person, you bow down and submit or take them out in one go. In other words…"

I raise an eyebrow at both of them. "Go on." the twins gave each other a glance and scream, startling me. "YOU STRIKE WHEN THEY ARE OFF GUARD!"

"Boss is the least guarded when he's sleeping, you only have one shot so don't waste this chance, just do it." Luke says, tossing me some evol sealing handcuffs and a Tranquilizer gun. He is right, My time limit is close to its end, I have to act now.

And that's how I end at up in Sylus's bedroom at midnight. Currently I am starting to have a lot of thoughts as I sit next to him and watch him sleep. "Man's gonna kill me the moment I pull this shit" "COME ON Y/N you are already here you can absolutely NOT back out now" "That's a very uncomfortable position to sleep in is he stupid he is going to get neck cramps when he wakes up" "He looks very hot while sleeping." Fuck. Denying it is probably of no use at this point. Something about Sylus makes me fucking weak in the knees. Is it his voice? His ridiculously handsome face? His body? Or the way he tests my damn patience. I am not sure. Seeing him like this though, how calmly he is breathing. How his exposed chest keeps expanding as he inhales, how those pecs flex while he is doing that, how vulnerable he is looking right now, It's stirring something within me. I want to devour him.

sylus…sylus? I slowly call him, ensuring he is asleep. This is not the time to be thinking about bull shit like that. get your head back in the game y/n. The aforementioned doesn't make any noise, completely oblivious of my presence as he keeps on sleeping, I take this chance and cuff his hand to the bed. "This is exactly what you get for all the terrible things you do." There. I cuffed his hand. Now what? Before my hand could even touch his body, he grabs my wrist and brings me closer to his face. Shocking me. I probably look like a deer caught in the headlights right now.

"Showing up uninvited at this hour… want me to tell you a bedtime story?" Wow. What a cocky bastard. well, not for long. "Don't talk to me in that tone mister, if anything you should be the one to figure out what's going on here, these handcuffs nullify a person's evol for an hour, so no matter how powerful you are, you are helpless as of right now." I say as I pin him down on the bed, his hand still cuffed to the nightstand. From here I can see how Sylus's chest starts falling and rising a bit faster than usual. Maybe I should tease him a bit.

"Really? what do you plan to do then since I have become your prey?" Did he actually just ask me that? Is he trying to provoke me, test the level of self control I practice? Oh well. I never had much self restraint to begin with.

"Hmm.. Let me think… How about.. This." I hear Sylus audibly flinch as I wrap my left arm around his torso and squish my left cheek on his left pecs. Comical. I had no idea I would enjoy riling him up this much. "What? A thorough body search is necessary don't you think? Or do you want me to stop? I ask, already aware of what his answer is going to be. After taking two long breaths, he chuckles, pretending to still be in control of the situation. "H-help yourself."

"Don't mind if I do." With that I use my free hand that's not trapping his body to grab his face. He immediately starts melting in my palm. I use my fingertips to give light touches to his cheek, chin and slowly rub his ear. His breathing seems to be getting heavier by the minute. I move closer to the side of his face. "Panting already? I have barely even touched you yet." I whisper, and then lick a long stripe across his earlobe, he is blushing so hard and even starts trembling a little bit as I proceed to give kisses down his neck. He is so cute. "Y/n…" He moans out softly unable to look into eyes and hold my gaze, to embarrassed to do so I guess. "What is it 'sweetie'?" He whimpers a bit at the word that he usually calls me. "P-Please…." "Please what honey? Use your words." "please!… please Kiss me." He says in such a meek voice, body hot to touch with all the flushing and blushing. And who am I to refuse such a polite request? I lean down and smash my lips to his. It was a hot makeout with our tongues rolling against each other, his mouth opening to give my tongue more access as I bite his bottom lip and yank his hair in the kiss, making him moan, again. God, He is driving me crazy. I can feel his hand tugging the handcuffs, he wants to break from it so bad. Although I doubt he won't be able to free himself. I release our mouths harshly, figuring that he must be out of breath by hearing his pants. His eyes are all hazy, blush creeping to his neck and chest, my god he looks so fucked out already. I slowly trace his chest with my fingertips and then all of sudden I feel something hard beneath his robe. "Would you look at that? You kept the brooch with you all along. It's as if you wanted me to touch you." Sylus starts chuckling at that. "I did." He replies, smirking, leaving me dumbfounded and speechless. "What?" "I did keep it with me. It was to see how far you were you willing to go to find this brooch, But mostly I wanted to do this just for you to touch me. Which is exactly what you're doing right now." Hearing that I put the brooch on the bedside stand, and then use my body to pin him down again. "So you did all this… just to grab my attention? My, my Sylus I didn't know you were such a slut." His breath hitches again, it seems to do that whenever I insult him. "What are you going to do to me y/n, will you punish me?" he says, while being all smiley. If a punishment is what he wants, Then it's a punishment he shall get. "Stop talking." I sit on him, cunt pressed to that raging boner he has gained, than I bit down his collarbone while grinding on his dick. "h-haah… Y/N! oh my god…a-ah~" If his breathing could get any heavier, then it just did, his eyes are starting to get watery, he starts thrashing around the bed but I don't let him go until I have made a nice reddish- blue mark on his collarbone. "Don't hA~Ah.. Don't tease please.." He exclaims shakily making me sit straight which probably added more pressure on his cock as I see his eyes roll back and back arch a bit. "Darling, can't you see I am punishing you? you cannot make demands here." Sylus tries to thrust up to get more friction but I block him, I am not going to let him finish him so early. What would be the fun in that? "lay still." Sylus infact does not lay still. He keeps moving, thrusts shooting jolts of pleasure through my body as well. I steady my breath, I am still the one in control. "LAY STILL SYLUS!" I slap harshly across his nipple, which seems to shock him. His eyes widen a bit as he lets out a loud whine and tears start falling from his eyes. And that's when something snaps within me.

"I-I am sorry, y/n… plEASE- aaagh~" His voice now a tad bit higher as I start twisting and rolling his nipples in my fingertips. "Oh my.. I didn't know you were this sensitive here." I then bend down and take one in my mouth, softly sucking on it and flicking the other one. I can feel his body turning into mush as I look up at him, Sylus is unable to hold my gaze, soft gasps and groans escaping his swollen lips, he looks so cute like this. I then release his nipple with a lewd pop and give the other one the same treatment, and while massaging the other pec, I grind on down him again. "T-tOo much. this is TOO MUCH! please let me hahh! pleaSE LEt me mOvE." I can literally see the hearts forming in his eyes beneath the puddle of tears. Maybe I should go easy on my poor baby. I place a gentle kiss on his cheeks and wipe his tears that were rolling down . And then I start riding him, or you could say humping, Sylus throws his head back on the bed, adam's apple bobbing and fists clenched. "Haa~! thankyou so much a-ah~ I'm.. yeah please use me just like that! thank you y/n THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUUU~" He starts to ramble incoherent words, a series of broken 'please' and 'thankyou's' and random chants of my name, it's all adding to the pleasure as the heat pools in my stomach, ready to be released any second. I feel like he is close to his release too. "I-I am ugh.. I am close y/n Please! please let me haaH~ Please let me…" "Go ahead baby. Cum for me." That's all it takes for him to cum in his robe, making it completely dirty below. I ride him throughout his orgasm and then lie on top of him again, head resting on his shoulder. We lay like that for quite some time when sylus starts speaking "Are you satisfied now? Please uncuff me Miss. Or I will do it myself." "I know you can. But you wouldn't dare." "oh yeah? why so?" "Because I haven't cum yet Sylus. You will only leave when I tell you to." I can feel Sylus twitching beneath me again.

This is going to be a very long night.

..............................................................................................................................

AU: kill me

[xitsensunmoon]

Biting the Hand That Feeds au FAQ (Vampires + donor au)

Any general content warnings for bhtf au?

Yes. A normal amount of fnaf warnings, a normal amount of vampire warnings. For someone who doesn't know I elaborate... For vampire stuff, the most obvious ones are blood, hypnosis, bites, and animalistic behaviour. Less obvious - slightly suggestive themes. For fnaf - fnaf's usual violence, dark themes, a drop of gore and murders. The lore is uh. Very dark. I will try to decrease the amount of all of the cruelty but man. People who know, know how hard it will be. But I will tag everything properly so don't worry.

Is there a fic for your au?

No. And currently, I'm not even planning on writing one.

How do I find the story?

For now, we have two comics that are directly connected and one that doesn't have a specific place in the story but is about canonical lore.

[ 1 ] - [ 2 ] - [ x ]

In future, we will have more and I probably absolutely will forget to update this post so I recommend checking the tags. Here's the tag list

Tip: don't click the tag. Tumblr hides half of the results. Type it in the blog's search instead :)

Are the comics the only canonical thing about au?

No! I answer asks and draw a lot of doodles with bhtf au all the time and 90% of them are canon. You can, yet again, find everything in the tag list linked in the previous question.

Can I draw/write fan stuff for your au?

Yes, please!! I'm always happy to see fanart and fan writings and literally everything that you do! Just tag me when you post and use a fanart or fanwriting tag for au specifically so I don't miss it!

Can you include my characters in your story?

No, unfortunately, I cannot. The story is already written and I don't have any "space" for background characters either. Maybe it will change but currently, things are like this.

I asked a question with an interaction with my characters and I never got an answer, why?

I don't accept such requests. I'm not ready to spend my time drawing other people's characters for free(if I personally don't want to, of course)

Is there any limit to how many questions I can ask?

No, not at all! You can ask all you want just please make sure your question wasn't answered before. There is a big possibility I will just simply delete it if it was answered beforehand many times. Check the ask tag for it.

What about limitations? Any boundaries?

Please no questions about tickling🧍‍♀️ I got so many of those it already makes me uncomfortable. And for some reason, a lot of people send asks that include violence towards my characters and while I don't really feel uncomfortable with this I just idk what to answer and why are you even doing this lmao

What questions I should avoid?

Well, not really avoid but I will mention it anyway.

The things I have planned to draw right now:

- Sun and Moon and y/n's first meeting

- The creation of Sun&Moon

- Why S&M are sensitive to light and darkness

- How they hunt

So no need to ask me about these. I will show it, I promise.

What about sexual themes?

I understand that I post a lot of suggestive stuff and it may appear I allow such a thing but no.

You can create content with it tho, I don't mind for the most part. Just be ready that I may not reblog it, as my Tumblr is a SFW place. It's always 50/50.

Romantic themes?

I do draw some kisses and cuddles when I feel like it and you of course can send ideas for cute interactions but in the story we're very far away from it lol.

My question gets ignored even though I followed everything that you mentioned here. Why?

Answered in main FAQ.

Can I share the ideas for your au with you?

YES!!! Yes, yes and yes! I'm very open to that, like yes! The only thing that I definitely want to mention - you should expect that I actually can take your ideas and use them. Some people are protective of their ideas so if you're like this you probably should not share them with me :)

The information that you're using for your au is wrong.

Happens sometimes yeah. I know nothing about any medical stuff for y/n so I usually improvise. After all it's an au about robotic vampires man, this information is absolutely wrong. But! You're free to drop feedback/constructive criticism in my inbox!

Will be updated later

[aro-culture-is]

I've been questioning if I am aro or not for the past year, previously I identified myself as a lesbian because I dont have an interest in men, and I usually feel more comfortable on women. However when I try to imaginr myself in the future I dont see myself being in a relationship in the future, like I am wondeeng "how the hell does one manage a relationship"

But I dont know if I am really aro because when I was in middle school I had a sort of "crush" on a person but I was mostly thinking "Hey this girl is really nice and the only person that understands me maybe I have a crush on her" and I really love the idea of romance and shipping characters and seeing other aromantic people being repulsed by the idea made me question even more.

hi! thanks for reaching out. since it's been a while since I've answered stuff like this, reminder that all asks of this nature are filed under the tag 'am i aro'

Your first paragraph is such a common experience in a-spec communities - initially, most folks start from "well, i'm not attracted to x gender, so I must be attracted to y?" or "well, I'm equally attracted to all genders, so I must be bi/pan?" when the problem is, 0 attraction to one gender is not related at all to how you feel about others, and 0 = 0. You're in very, very good company among a-spec folks, including yours truly - who rotated through the whole of LGBTQ before realizing aromanticism was an option that actually fit very well.

With regards to the second paragraph - first of all, mood! Personally, that "crush" was something we'd later identify as a squish, or friendship crush. Hilariously, we no longer like this particular person at all, as becoming friends led to us discovering our specific neurodivergent flavors interacted to constantly frustrate us. Enjoying - or not enjoying - romance and shipping is not at all something inherent to your attraction.

Plenty of outwardly aro folks talk more about our experiences with romantic repulsion and frustrations with shipping culture because we are in aromantic spaces and talking about the sociological implications, but - personally? I adore shipping, dislike seeing irl romance, and think it's mostly interesting to talk about how romance interacts with expectations and laws in society. I don't like to call myself romance repulsed, romance favorable, any of that - I think those are personally limiting to my identity and how I interact with those subjects. Other folks find it useful as a shorthand to explain how they feel, and that's great too!

I can't tell you what your identity is, but I think it's useful to say this: you've described to me a very, very common story to many a-spec folks. You're seeking advice from me, which tells me it probably matters a lot to you, and I wouldn't be surprised if, in some ways, you feel like you need permission, or verification, or any of those sorts of things.

I think, rather than relying on that - what would happen if, privately, you give yourself permission to explore what it feels like to say "I am aromantic", or "I think I'm aromantic"? How do you feel? Nervous, anxious, bubbly, weighed down, vulnerable - those are all common. But the thing is, if I think of an identity I am 100% sure I do not belong to in that way - I certainly don't feel a little flutter of hope. I don't feel like I might be onto a scary new journey. I just feel like I've said that the world is shaped like a rabbit - nonsensical and wrong. If you feel like there's a possibility - does it hurt you to say, "I might be, and what does that change?" The worst that happens is, quite literally, you learned something about yourself.

-- mod axel

[violetasteracademic]

i don't know why "you are the new ribbon az" is turned into something romantic. after the interaction gwyn and azriel had in the bonus chapter gwyn immediately saw the ribbon as an opponent.

"Gwyn nodded her farewell, again facing the ribbon. A warrior sizing up an opponent, all traces of that charming irreverence gone."

if azriel=ribbon, then gwyn was showing her true feelings for azriel through the ribbon after she stopped talking charmingly to him.

Hello anon!!

While I always want to come from the most well informed place as possible, I must admit I am someone who does not wade into the pools of anti Elriel tags. Thus, I get the majority of the information about what Az and G/wyn shippers are using as evidence against my will, or from my real human friends who ship them but are not deep in the trenches. For them, it really doesn't go deeper than: I'm neutral about L/ucien and Elain so they might as well be paired off but I love G/wyn and Az so I want them to be together. Fair.

So- I'm kinda spinning my wheels here, but I will say some recurring themes I have noticed with my limited exposure is this:

Much of the G/wynriel ship is centered around the idea of symbolic transference. This logic is actually not flawed in of itself, and is an extremely common literary device. However, in the current story, it relies on creating narrative context where it doesn't exist and erasing the context that does exist for it to make sense.

What I mean is this:

I understand there to be a belief that Elain returning Truth-Teller at the end of ACOWAR was symbolic transference that reflected that Elriel's developing relationship was over because she was symbolically "giving Azriel back and not turning back." Then started "opening up" to L/ucien. The context that this lacks is that we have two more books following this where they did not in fact end, but grow. And Elain did not, in fact, open up to L/ucien but further shrank around him and snapped about him not being entitled to her her affection and time just because he was a nice boi bringing her presents.

There is a belief that Azriel regifting the necklace was the symbolic transference of Azriel's confirmed romantic feelings for Elain to G/wyn.

I can only assume that, because so much of the thought process relies on a belief in the employment of this literary device, symbolic transference also somehow needed to be applied to G/wyn, and the ribbon was all that could even remotely apply.

I think what is missing from all of this, apart from the obvious which is that Azriel and Elain are feral for each other, is that this type of literary device is typically applied symbolically at the culmination of the story and character arcs. Think of when Aelin returned her amethyst ring to Chaol. She had an entire book with Rowan, away from Chaol, reflecting on their relationship, developing feelings for her end game romantic interest and finally becoming the lost Queen of Terrason and quite literally learning to move away from her human body- the one that Chaol had loved.

She finds her path, her purpose, her future, and after all of this, she finally lets go of what she has been holding on to. She returns the ring.

Elain and Azriel have not had their story yet, and this is where the holes lie. For any of this to be foreshadowing or the literary device that people are assigning to it, the cart is being placed before the horse. The food is being served raw.

If Elain and Azriel did not have a story in development, there would be no need for all of these little items to symbolically represent the end of their story. It actually has to happen first for these little details to mean what they are being interpreted to mean, and then we look back and say, oh, how clever, when Elain gave Truth-Teller back, it's because she was ready to let go. When Azriel regifted the necklace, it's because in two pages and the interference of a third characer, he moved on from her.

But if Elain and Azriel in fact ended off page in a bonus chapter due to symbolic transference of a relationship, absolutely nothing will land as intended. Which, again, is where it gets messy. Elain returning the knife didn't end of Elriel's budding romantic interest. So that piece gets taken out. Azriel regifting the necklace to G/wyn was not based on his emotional growth as a character and his maturing and finding himself and learning he is not interested in perusing a woman he is forbidden from seeing, so that gets taken out.

Which leaves us the ribbon. And looking at the other perceived literary devices, we have to ask- what is Gwyn transferring?

Azriel giving Elain Truth-Teller was romantic.

Azriel gifting Elain her necklace was romantic.

Both of those moments are being used to symbolize the literal transference of romantic affection.

Was G/wyn... romantically interested in the ribbon? Was she attracted to the ribbon? But she realized she couldn't have the relationship she wanted with the ribbon, so now she is symbolically transferring her feelings for the ribbon to the better choice, Azriel?

Context, friends. Context. Unless we are suggesting that G/wyn was in fact in a romantic relationship with the ribbon, the symbolism and assumption of the employed literary device does not even make sense. You cannot employ transference with nothing to...well... transfer.

Thanks all I've got for this one! Stay kind out there, fam.

[kickbutts-singsongs]

I know no one asked, but I have exactly zero (0) people to talk about bkdk with irl so here you guys go

My BKDK Journey

Yes, this sounds stupid, but my god it’s been almost three years of an absolute rollercoaster of feelings and denials and tears and revelations…

and if you don’t mind, I’m gonna rant about it.

(not spoiler free)

_____

May 2021

To start off, i wasn’t always a bkdk shipper.

I shipped izu*cha at first (not saying it’s a bad ship btw; it’s actually quite cute. im just afraid people’ll be mad if I accidentally invade their tag lol), primarily because I assumed that would be the ship that became canon.

But also, my veryyyyy leasttttt favorite character… was Bakugou Katsuki.

When I tell you that I would’ve loved nothing more than to somehow spawn into the bnha universe and punch that brat in the face— AGHHHHHHHHHH

Now this wasn’t all his fault: A) I watched the dub first lol, and B) he reminded me of someone that i was not in a place to stand up to at the time, and his constant anger, yelling, and harsh treatment of Izuku—who i began to relate to—made me hateeee him.

There was a time when I literally said “if he died, I wouldn’t miss him.” <- this was later proven false lol

So, I was watching the anime dub with an absolute animosity for our resident deuteragonist, but on top of that…

I was watching it with a friend with a crunchyroll account who lived in another state that I was visiting and staying with for two weeks, so by the time i had to go back home, we’d only gotten up to the part where All Might was getting Inko’s permission to let Izuku stay at the UA dorms.

Anddddddd in my drive to consume more bnha once I got home, i somehow stumbled across an Instagram account that posted bnha sub episodes divided into parts,

but they only had season four and onwards.

Sooooo I never saw the second half of season three… more importantly,

I NEVER SAW DEKU VS KACCHAN 2!!!!!

(I will say that I had seen a couple photos/edits/etc, but I never knew what had been said, or why they fought)

_____

June 2021

At this point in time, I’d been exposed to a lot of the fandom. My fyp on both IG and Pinterest were filled to the brim with all things bnha (because this is what happens when one has a hyperfixation), so I saw a lot of stuff.

Especially fanart.

This is where I started learning about the different ships.

I saw a lot of the side character ships and thought they were adorable (kamijirou, todomomo, even kiribaku), but then I saw some with Izuku.

Izu*cha was a given for me. I didn’t think there was a single person that didn’t ship it. But then I started seeing fanart of ships like tododeku, shindeku, and bakudeku.

And my first reaction to finding out that people shipped my beautiful baby sunshine boi with the person who bullied him for years?????

HELLLLLLLLLLL NO

So with my (unknowingly) limited knowledge of their relationship, i was very much an anti (i never spoke out or anything, i just reallyyyy didn’t like the ship lol)

(And then, you know, I started to see all the bkdk hate online and kinda went “okay not touching that”)

But that began to change…

_____

August 2021

…after I saw a manga leak for the first time.

I was scrolling thru my feed and all of a sudden. BOOM!

I was like 😧

IS THAT IZUKU?????

And i looked in the comments and yes it was.

I checked out the page and found that they had an entire account of manga leaks and was so happy.

I quickly began to read from the very bottom of that account, and it started from right about where Izuku first began his vigilante arc (i had no idea how much was in between then and where I left off on the anime, but I was willing to read it lol)

And so I waited diligently for the leaks every week (a practice I have continued to uphold lol), until one day, i came across an untranslated series of panels from the latest chapter. I looked at it and it was of Katsuki and Izuku, facing each other in the rain (you know the one). I knew the leaks would be coming a day later, but I wanted to look through them anyways, so I did.

I didn’t understand a word they said, but the pictures and imagery of them as kids then middle schoolers then where they were now seemed so touching…

And then I came across a pair of kanji that I recognized.

I was like “wait WHAT???”

I zoomed in and went “that— isn’t that—? That’s part of Midoriya’s name, right???”

And then I was like “wait a second… omg that’s Izuku, isn’t it. That’s the freaking kanji for Izuku.”

And it was!!!!!

So inside I’m having a mini freakout cuz—

Bakugou just called him IZUKU

Fast forward to the next day, and I looked at the translated version, and found out that not only did he call him Izuku,

He

Freaking

APOLOGIZED

And I was like “huhhhhhhh”

What happened between now and the most recent anime episodes for this to occur???? For Bakugou to do a complete 180 and apologize????????

Well, I finally got my answers…

_____

November 2021

…when I started reading the manga.

I started from the beginning, cuz I wanted to see Horikoshi’s art style and the extra drawings and all the other stuff…

And when I tell you that Katsuki became a whole new character to me—

First, I read everything about early-on Bakugou— without hearing him yell in his dub voice—and realized “oh wow he really is just a kid with issues and a worldview that he’s now having to change.”

Then, I finally read what happened in that space between moving into the dorms and the beginning of season four (most importantly, DvK2).

Cried.

Then, oh then, I got up to where season five ended and the rest of the manga began.

. . .

Funny thing: back when I read the leaks to ch322, I remember thinking to myself, “huh. what did Bakugou mean by Shigaraki making swiss cheese outta him?”

😦

THE WAY I GASPED

AND THEN CRIED

OH MY FREAKING GOD

That was the moment where i truly ceased to hate Katsuki cuz holy character development batman

Then, of course, we see them in recovery

And then the vigilante arc and apology scene *sobs*

And then I was caught up.

(Btw I finished the entire manga up ‘til ch334 in just over a week. I read for nine days straight. During the school year. My emotions were all over the place goodness gracious I could barely concentrate.)

So that’s how I went from being a Bakugou hater to going “you know what he’s a complex character and he’s slowly becoming a better person” and realizing that he was now one of my fav characters and therefore cursed to die but I’ll talk about that later

Was I now a bakudeku shipper?

Hah nope.

_____

December 2021

I began my dive into the true essence of any fandom: fanfiction.

Over the course of winter break, I had started off with fics that had no romantic pairing (I just wanted to see my boi Izuku), but then somehow stumbled across Mastermind: Strategist for Hire and then read the entirety of the For Want of a Nail series (shoutout to Clouds btw ❤️) cuz I was like “ok whew no bkdk fics” which was my mindset at the time.

But somehow (I can’t even remember how I found it) I came across a bkdk fic. It was called For Want of Izuku’s Toe Joint by Talavin (okay now that I think about it there’s probably a simple explanation lol).

I don’t quite know what compelled me to start reading it, but I did.

And I really liked it.

But not in the “I’ve been converted” kinda way.

It was like an “I shouldn’t be enjoying this why am I enjoying this?” kinda feeling. Like my head says no but my heart says yeah.

A really really really really guilty pleasure.

So, from that day on, whenever I came across any form of bkdk media, I would simultaneously feel discomfort and yet an odd sense of satisfaction.

A snippet of my daily life:

Me: *comes across bkdk fanart on pinterest*

Me: eww

Also me: *stares at it for like five minutes straight*

Me: who even likes this?

Also me: *saves pin to my mha board*

Me: not my ship

Also me: *scrolls down to more like this*

Bless my heart I was in such denial.

_____

July 2022

Bit of a timeskip, but nothing of note really happened in those last six months so here we go.

We’ve gotten to the point in the manga where the final arc is underway and Bakugou is about to KICK SOME BUTT

He’s revealed his Panser Strafe support item and I’m gushing about it to my friend (she kinda fell out of the fandom but still tolerated my rants bless her)

Oh, side note: it was then that I also expressed my concern for Bakugou’s “alive” status

Evidence:

For reference, some of my favorite characters are:

Beth March (Little Women)

John Reese (Person of Interest)

Joss Carter (Person of Interest)

Leonard Snart (Arrowverse)

Logan Echolls (Veronica Mars)

Fantine (Les Mis)

Eponine (Les Mis)

Jean Valjean (Les Mis)

Simon (Lord of the Flies)

Piggy (Lord of the Flies)

Grace Stone (Manifest)

Bubaigawara Jin — Twice (BNHA)

Wanna guess which of these guys died?

Trick question! It’s all of them (:

Yeah so anyways those following chapters really made me excited and nervous cuz YEAH KICK HIS ASS BAKUGOU but also IZUKUUUUU WE NEED YOU

hah hah.

_____

August 2022

Utterly gobsmacked. Cried. Disbelief. Horrified. Confusion. Anger. Went through the five stages of grief and then some.

Sometimes I hate being right 🥲

But the good thing that came from this was that my positive view of Katsuki only grew after seeing his utter faith in Izuku (and his thoughts being on him in his final moments???? 🥺🥺🥺)

And it was at this point in time where I could admit to myself “you know what? i see it. i see the appeal. i wouldn’t mind this actually becoming canon.”

Did I think that it would actually become canon?? No.

_____

September 2022

I don’t know how I thought Izuku was gonna react to seeing Katsuki’s body on the ground, but GOOD LORD IT WASNT THAT

Even sweet little blind me realized “oh wow he like really feels intense stuff for Katsuki huh”

(But some things I missed—cuz I was still a bit wired for izu*cha—were shigarakis implications “yeah u looooove the present I got u” and the freaking HEART that blackwhip caused??? when Izuku reeled himself back in???? like how did i miss that i read that chapter like fifteen times??)

So this is all to say that I’ve missed any and all actual bkdk hints up until this point. I finally lifted my head out of the izu*cha fog when…

_____

July 2023

…Ochako and Toga had their chat about romance.

The first actual hint was when Ochako had told Toga “I’ll give you my blood for the rest of my life.”

Little blind me became a bit less blind that day, cuz I was like “um. ochako? that— that sounded kinda like a proposal. like. a marriage proposal. ochako??”

And then those chapters just kept getting better!!

Bebe Ochako’s determination???

The Spirited Away moment?????

“I’m envious of your smile”????????

“YOU REALLY THINK IM CUTE?” “THE CUTEST IN THE WHOLE WORLD” LIKE 😭😭😭😭😭

For the first time, I was looking at the manga without the assumption that izu*cha would be endgame. And it only got better after I…

_____

August 2023

…got Tumblr!!!

Everything was downhill from here folks.

In the best possible way.

I came across some analyses of what was going on with togachako, and consequently led me to some bakudeku analyses. I read them and my goodness they made so much sense.

Like not even just personality-wise!! Those metas brought in actual things Horikoshi said about wanting to go outside the norms of shounen (and about not liking the Naruto ending 💀), and compared bkdk to tropes in different works of fiction, and even discussed how bkdk made sense narratively. They properly convinced me of the ship.

And then for good measure, I reread the manga in its entirety thru a bkdk filter, and lo and behold things took on new meanings and my eyes were opened.

I totally and irrevocably shipped them! And I actually thought they had a chance at being canon!!

(And then I binged so much bkdk fanfiction omg you wouldn’t BELIEVE like I read the ones with the highest kudos first and then just picked the biggest collections I could find and read down the line

It was like being on drugs like each fic gave me more dopamine than the last I was so happy oh my god)

_____

October 2023

And then finally, the day came.

The answer to “is bakugou alive yet?” became a yes.

We screamed. We cried. We jumped for joy. We told bakugou antis to suck it. But most of all, our bkdk hearts soared to see our boys make eye contact with each other for the first time in over a year 🥹

And from that moment on, I truly began to believe that bkdk would indeed become canon.

_____

And so, this concludes my 42672288 page rant about how I came to be a bkdk shipper.

Thank you for reading, and before I go, I want to ask:

How did you guys get into bkdk?

Did you convert over from izu*cha? Or perhaps tododeku? Or maybe kiribaku? Or are you one of the few who have shipped them since the beginning??

In any case, I’m happy you’re here. And while it may have taken me a couple years, I’m happy that I’m here too :)

(and thank you @animelover32456)

[wuffgang-ameowdeus-moozart]

Aren't you tired of forced romances with no chemistry that only take away from the actually interesting plot? Don't you just want media where romance isn't portrayed as being superior and more important than (queer)platonic relationships?

Well, my exhausted aro ass is too, so here are a few tricks and wisdoms I've gathered over my years of being a-spec (which is all of them) on how to avoid romance (in media) in a very allonormative society 💚🤍🩶🖤

(this is a rec list btw. no I am not shitting on the shows that I tagged, quite the opposite)

1. Middle Grade

I get if you aren't really into that, because it is kind of annoying to be pointed to literal children's literature when all you want is a story that isn't constantly being interrupted by describing the main guy's heated eyes for the twentieth time.

However.

It is true that in middle grade, friendship is always more important than romance. Because, let's face it. Making two eleven year old characters kiss is kinda weird. So even if there is a romance, it isn't very prominent and treated more like friendship and/or a puppy crush. Plus some stories get surprisingly dark?!?!

Examples

- Howl's Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones), technically a romance in the end, but mostly focused on found family, shenanigans, and finding your own value

- House of Many Ways (DWJ). Yes, again. I really like her books okay? They always have something so fantastical and whimsical about them. This is my other favorite book by her and it has literally no romance at all. Plus a hmc cameo that is so fun !!

- Coraline (Neil Gaiman). Maybe this is cheating because I never actually read it. However. a) the movie traumatized me. b) Wybie was added to the movie, he doesn't exist in the book, so if "power of friendship" isn't your thing this will be great. Probably vibes over plot.

Flyte (Angie Sage). Technically this is the second book, but I never read the first one and still understood everything. Once again, no romance at all. A fun read, which can get surprisingly dark at times.

2. Short Story Collections

Once again, I get it if it isn't your thing. Short stories are - as the name reveals - short. Which means: no worldbuilding, very limited narrator, open ending, no time to really get attached to characters, etc.

But.

The cool thing about collections, is that they always have a certain theme. And as long as the theme is not romance, romance will not be the focus. Even if there is a romantic relationship, it will be used to explore this theme since there simply isn't time for anything else.

Examples:

Life Ceremony (Sayaka Murata) This is the book that actually made me figure out: hey! I do actually like short stories !! The main theme is basically about being different and it plays a lot with body horror and the perception of your own body in contrast with how society sees it. There is even a story about two women who platonically live together and raised multiple children!

Canterbury Classics: Classic Tales of Horror (introduction by Ernest Hilbert). As the name suggests, this is a collection of horror short stories, featuring well-known authors such as Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe or Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As these are classic old tales, the language is a bit complicated at times and you can read them for free on Gutenberg. However, the book is very very pretty and the introduction is very interesting (Origins of the genre, specific tropes and monsters, etc.)

3. Podcasts

PODCASTS!!! If you follow me, you are probably already aware of those. However, in case you don't, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of Audiodramas.

The cool thing about Podcasts is that pretty much anyone can do it. All you need is an idea, a mic, a lot of motivation, and you're pretty much set to go. No producers or publishers you need to get approval from. So it is only natural that this medium is filled to the brim with queer creators. Basically every character is somewhat queer. It's awesome.

Examples:

- The Silt Verses. I adore TSV. I listened to the first season like, four times. (the second one is good too but OH MY GOD THE FIRST ONE). And one of the main characters is canonically and explicitly aro!! Sister Carpenter, I love you with my whole being. And the great thing is, it is very clear that the writers love her, too!! There is a lot (like a LOT) of body horror so it isn't for everybody. But if you think you can handle it I really recommend it. (Plus, not any romance plotlines at all !!)

- Wolf 359. This is one of the older ones and it is really good. It's a bunch of restless and very unwell people stuck in a spaceship under the unforgiving rule of capitalism. However bad you imagine it, I can assure you it is worse. But the really cool thing is that there literally isn't any romance at all. Like, there are great m/f friendships but they never even hint towards a romance. Some people are so unused to that that they literally ship the main dude with the fucking robot AI. (don't worry, not an actual romance plot).

- Girl in space. I am sure you will be absolutely shook to know that this one also takes place in space. It is about a girl. In space. Shocking, I know. Except that she has been on her own for well over a year when suddenly a fleet of strange ships arrive and kidnap her. There is also a very asshole-y robot. And questions about what makes us human. And found family!! And a goat. And cheese. Just go listen to it okay. This is also one of the shortest ones of the list, so maybe a good start.

- Malevolent. I have to confess that I personally am not a huge fan of this one? Like the premise is really cool - a detective who wakes up blind and with a demon in his head who can see through the detectives eyes. What the fuck?, you may ask yourself. So does Arthur Lester. Mysteries and other dimensions and a whole lot of pain ensues. Harlan is undeniably an awesome VA and a great writer, but his stories just seem a bit too repetitive to me? Nonetheless I know of lots of people who enjoy it a lot. Trying to define the relationship between Arthur and John (his demon) is perhaps the biggest mystery of them all. (Jk. there are multiple murders and stuff. they've really got other priorities)

- Middle:Below. This is another short one and probably the least famous of this list? It's about this funky lil dude with a ghost roommate and a cat who can talk (.....or can it?). There is a m/f friendship but it never turns into a romance (wow it is possible!!). They all go on adventures on the dimension between life and death. Despite the description, this is literally just a comedy. A bit spooky at best. Reminds me a bit of scarier kids cartoons like gravity falls.

4. "Gay" movies/series in countries with homophobic censorship

Now you may think, "hey that seems like a bit of an asshole move!". And you would be 100% correct in thinking that.

However.

It does also mean that the main relationship of the story can never be explicitly romantic. They can allude to it, they can try to show it. But they can never confirm. So it is very easy to interpret them as having a QPR. (because tbh I don't think I've ever seen one on television.)

Examples:

The Untamed. Look. I am aware that the first episode is so fucking atrocious, all right? And no, the CGI does in fact never get better. And sometimes the translated subtitles are a bit awkward. But I swear that it is so good. Trust me on this one, okay? Just make it through the first ep. It's a wild ride. Lan Zhan I love you. (However the book it is based on (written by a woman) depicts them being in an explicitly romantic relationship, with lots of very inaccurate and badly researched smut, so the fandom pretty much sees them as exclusively romantic.)

- Word of Honor. Very much in the same vein as The Untamed. Except that the first episode is less horrible. And the one dude has a very fruity fan. And they also raise a kid together. And the costumes of the villains are really fun!! I actually never finished this one tbh. I know that the book it is based on has one very extremely terrible ableist plot point, but I don't know if that made it into the show since I never got that far

The Devil Judge. The last two were fantasy, this one is a dystopia. Very tense and interesting. There is a romantic subplot (typical childhood friend vs bad boy love triangle), but he rejects the childhood friend and they can't exactly show him and the "bad boy" (who is actually a judge. and also kinda his sugar daddy) as explicitly romantic for the reason above. They also live in the same house and cook together and take care of a child together. Can totally recommend.

Assassination Classroom. A bunch of students have to kill their teacher who is an alien. that's literally the plot. I cried so hard at the finale. Nagisa and Karma have MASSIVE vibes and you can't convince me otherwise. (There is a romantic subplot that does end in a kiss, but they agree to continue as friends since those were..... extenuating circumstances. The dude very clearly is not into her). Nagisa also very aro-spec coded imo.

5. "Straightbaiting" Anime

Sometimes Anime does this thing (which I personally find very hilarious) where a boy and a girl will have no other romantic involvements or love interests while growing closer and closer, but never get together. A bit like reverse queerbaiting.

Examples:

- Fairy Tail. The ultimate power is friendship anime. That is all you need to know. (I should also perhaps warn you that the end of the last arc (and the sequel series, but we don't talk about that) are huge letdowns. Like the buildup? So good. But....welp. If that doesn't bother you too much and the idea to have a group of people be the main character instead of one person only, this may be the series for you. Just do yourself a favor and skip all the filler arcs

Soul Eater. I really love the vibes of this one. Once again, most of the fandom likes depicting them as explicitly romantic, but they never canonically are. It also reminds me a bit of creepy children cartoons. It is also where the superior fictional school exists, Devon. Frankenstein teaches there (the dude, not the monster). People transform into badass weapons. Nobody can convince me that Make Albarn is not a trans woman. However the ending deviates a bit from the manga, and I personally think the anime one is a bit worse

Noragami. This one will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the first anime I really watched. This one also has people who transform into weapons, but the vibes are very different. It goes a bit more into Japanese folklore in case that interests you.

Bonus: Canonically Aro/Heavily Aro-Coded Characters

They were not anywhere above because the stories they are in didn't really fit any of the categories. But they exist!

Wolf (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts). I adore Wolf. There is also barely any romance. Like, it will seem like it at first, but don't worry, it's only straightbaiting. There is a romance subplot but it's very brief and very much in the background. Overall very good aro show 👍

Isaac (Heartstopper) Very queer show, very high likelihood that you already know of it. The series per se is very romance focused, but as far as I've heard the a-spec rep in S2 is really good

Georgia (Loveless). Actually never read it. But, well. Title pretty self-explanatory dare I say. By the same author as Heartstopper (Alice Oseman)

Chance/Chris and Shadow/Ryan (woe.begone) Are explicitly in a QPR together !! they are also probably the healthiest couple in the podcast lol

Henry Clerval (Frankenstein). Henry is the "a couple of besties!!" to Victor's "we look like a couple <3"

Barbie (Barbie 2023) If you've seen it you know what I mean.

Jo Marsh (Little Women). I never read the book, but Jo in the 2019 movie??? very sus.

I would also recommend checking out Japanese books! I personally think they are much better at writing romance than the western people lol. It's more about knowing each other and sharing your views of the world, thus changing each other and leaving a mark forever, even if the relationship ends. (studio ghibli romance vibes). My favorite Japanese book doesn't have an English translation :(

aber an alle Deutsch-Sprecher*innen: Die Katzen von Shinjuku (Durian Sukegawa) -> og title: Shinjuku no Neko

Can't think of anything else right now, but please leave some of your own recommendations! Hope this helps ^^

[citizensun]

Queerness and the House of Usher (spoilers!)

See I just added these Thoughts to the tags in @quecksilvereyes 's post but now I have Feelings too

TFotHoU (or HoU, as I will refer to it here), as expected from a Mike Flannagan show, has a bunch of Queer Rep™ to talk about. HoU is, also, about remarkably evil people - amoral capitalists who'll step over anyone if it means they'll get something from it. And look! Some of them are queer! Kinky too!

That's bad queer representation... right?

The show isn't that clear when stablishing sexualities, but we see that at least three of the Usher kids - Napoleon, Camille and Victorine - have same sex SOs/assistants with curious job descriptions. Prospero's taste for orgies probably implies queerness too, but honestly I don't remember if he gets it going with any guys in the story. I honestly have no idea about Tamerlane's voyerism thingie and Frederick is the only one with a "traditional family" going on.

Unrelated, but: Leo is definitely cheating on his bf Julius. Completely dismissing about his worries for him too. And for his cat. That's objectively evil, clearly. Vic literally killed her fiancée Alessandra, though she didn't stuff her under the floorboard, which is an L when compared to Poe's original. Cam doesn't believe in true love. Perry blackmailed his sister in law. Mean. He's also got a surprisingly high kill count for the family's disappointment, but since unlike Roderick he only killed rich people, we stan. I don't belong in Kinky spaces so I haven't got a big take on Tammie, only that - well, she's completely dismissing of her husband and sees him as a prop, just like the sex worker she hires.

Huh.

See, the nature of a story called "the fall of X family" is that X family is going to be the main character. The title kinda implies that they're falling for a reason, ergo, they're despicable fucking people. And they're queer! They're very queer. Many flavors of gay. They're the main characters, and they're monsters, and they're gay.

No, that's not bad rep.

Queerness as a movement, a community and a theory is very focused on scaping a cisheteronormative society's binaries (ie man/woman, husband/wife, public/private) and creating living conditions to those who fall outside of these categories - mlms and wlws, the trans, the nbs, the aros and aces... we are all queer, strange and estranged from this weird and limited worldview. And so we create a community for ourselves. It's very focused on care and anti-stablishment. Since a cisheteronormative society tends to be very white, rich and western, it's also focuses on anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism. Y'all know that, this is Tumblr and we love leftist Discourse.

I also know many, many gay people irl who are not like that at all. Libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, terfs, completely apolitical people and the like. Sexuality at it's core is personal, not political, so there are gay people out there who are perfectly comfortable with their sexuality on an individual level but do not see the point of getting involved in the broader context. They're queer, but are they...?

Well—

Not to mention there's lots of asshole gays out there! Don't you have a shitty ex? Have you never been almost run over by a drunken butch who blew cigar smoke into your face? I have! Life experiences are just like that. Maybe you should touch more grass. You'll probably find a lucky gift from your neighbour's dog, who is an astrology-obsessed bisexual and also really hot but stopped making out with you at a party once she found out you're a pisces (the neighbour, not the dog).

(Granted, none of this is as bad as implanting an experimental heart contraption into the fiancée you just killed because she dared to have ethical principles and then being so consumed with grief you stab yourself in front you'd your dad but you know how it goes. We're not the 1%.)

My point is, queer people are people. We are complex. We fuck up, and sometimes there's still times to fix things and sometimes... there isn't. We're consumed by jealousy and regret and sometimes we're so locked into our own head we stop believing the rest of the world is real too. Just like any other people, because unfortunately, queerness isn't a sign of morality.

And even if queerness does mean community, kindness and acceptance, tell me... Where the hell would the Usher kids get those from? The people around them are not really peers – they're ass-istants, blowjob-giving apartments, orgy mates, heart surgery providers, hired fitness moneybags, perfect housewives. Even if the partners are all shown to care for the Ushers, there's still a distance, a power gap, that makes the relationships fundamentally wrong.

And the partners? Arguably they're the good queer rep in the show, but look – even when Julius and Alessandra are shown to be good people (or at least people with an ethical boundary), they're not the good gays, they're simply the good SO's to a family of psychos. Exactly like Bill and Morrie, who afawk are straight people.

Which leads us to HoU's parameter of morality - Auguste Dupin. He refuses to drink the Amontillado, symbol of all the Usher opulence over the years. He got screwed over by the Usher twins and by the Raven herself, but he refused to cave in (except for the informant part, admittedly). He's not a good gay guy; he is gay and he is a good man.

The fundamental difference between our show's main tragic yaoi couple isn't that Auggie is a happily out gay man (and therefore is good) while Roderick is a sad divorced hetero (and therefore is bad). Auggie is the richer man because he is a good man; he has a spouse and children and grandchildren he loves with all his heart. He has a family and a community and he has found a sort of happiness no money can buy. Roderick owns the world – but what does he really have? What do his children even have? How could they ever build communities for themselves if they were never in one? Their father made them compete for his love. He never nurtured their bonds, he just showered them with money and excess until it was too much for them to handle. Juno herself pointed out - they were never a family. The House of Usher was only that. A house. It is empty and soulless.

What is queerness without a community? How could the people who represent the relentless corporate normativity and cutthroat capitalism ever be good queer rep? How can they even be queer?

Hear me out: on the most individual, simple level, being queer is still about not fitting in. These kids are bastards. They are are PoC and women in a predominantly male and white dominated space. They're on top of the world, but they're still outsiders to their own House. How could they not be queer?

And yes, I know this discussion takes a different turn when it comes to representation in media, but it's not like Flannagan fell into a Hays Code-era flamboyant villain trope. Queerness is just there. Just like Victorine and August are both black people in (arguably) the opposite ends of the morality spectrum, there are queer characters of many kinds here. The story just happens to be about the fucked up ones.

HoU is a poignant critique of capitalism and a surprisingly funny adaptation of Poe. We'll judge it by that. It happens to be queer – more things should be.

[atopvisenyashill]

Hey how come all the costumes in the final couple seasons of got were just black leather with pointy shoulders and chains

the real answer is that michele clapton is a hack and fraud who hates me, personally.

but there's probably a few reasons. i think irl, people associate black, leather, and wide shoulders with power, intimidation, more serious energy so to visually signal that sansa, cersei, dany, etc are now Power Players they have to put them in those costumes. michele clapton especially really loved using black leather and chains to signify Someone Is Being Serious - she has that interview where she talked specifically about Cersei and Dany wanting to be taken seriously by shying away from colors, using "chains of intent", and emulating the men who had the greatest affect on them ie Tywin and Viserys. You can really see when you look at Michele's interviews that she's bringing her own view of things into the costumes, which, yeah that's how it works (there's like a joke that Bear McCreary, for example, uses his partner as a singer in all of his soundtracks purely because he just wants to hear her sing lol) but I do think you really see the limits of her creativity there too. She has this idea that extravagance = unseriousness which is incredibly at odds with the way George has built up his world - I mean, Aegon IV was out here wearing like a 9 pound crown, and Daeron II wore it as well specifically to show how serious he is about being King. Roose wears all pink! The Tyrells are always awash in color, hell the Lannisters are always awash in color. The only person it makes sense to shy away from color is Dany - I imagine it was just easier for Viserys to find black leather to wear and buy that still showed his house colors than something red so that's why he leaned on it, and it would make sense that Dany is trying to emulate the only other Targaryen she knew by dressing the way he did when she feels like she's finally stepping into her role as The True Queen of Westeros. For Cersei, Sansa, even Arya, I think it's deeply silly that she took that similar approach.

Like, I do think some of her choices were okay - I love that she usually has Dany wearing trousers of some sort underneath her dresses because she felt like she always needed to prepare to run away, for example. I love Cersei's coronation dress, if not the ugly crown. I liked her dedication to making sure the Sons of the Harpy masks looked handmade and not factory produced. I love that Arya outfit in the last season, and I liked the attention to detail there when it comes to the coat looking slashed by Arya herself to make it fit her in the way she wants it to. I think where Michele consistently fails is a) the idea that the North is somehow less interested in fashion when the reality is that the North simply has different taste in fashion because they have a vastly different climate than most of the other kingdoms (similar to Dorne) and b) she tends to conflate feminimity and androgyny with weakness or silliness and masculinity with strength. It's not to say that you shouldn't think about the ways in which We As A Culture define power when designing a costume but just uncritically regurgitating "man = strong, woman = weak" sartorial work is lazy beyond belief. Jany Temime is leagues better, like even with some of my criticism of her work, I think she just has a much deeper understanding of color work, silhouette, and the way character informs style.

(people through a FIT in the tags of that post i linked tho even tho the op was Literally just making a gifset showing the costume change? no it's problematic to say "dany is trying to be taken seriously by emulating her brother" even though...that's literally exactly what she's doing. once again, targ nation are babies, sorry for my hater rant here but that post is one of the most annoying pile ons in this fandom to me).

[toastandjamie]

Been thinking about Mat Cauthon again, not an abnormal occurrence, but here’s an essay about him.

I have to cut this up because of the word limit, so here’s part 1

Part 1: How To Traumatize Your Comedic Relief

So like, Mat’s paranoia and trust issues stem entirely from the events of the first book regarding the Shadar Logoth dagger. But like- I wanna talk meta about Mat’s story and the concepts of loss of innocence, the evils of man, and fear of being powerless and how that relates to his character arc and relationships in the story. So let’s put aside the lore explanation of “evil dagger doing evil dagger things”

So when we first meet not just Mat, but all three Ta’veren boys there’s this element of childlike innocence to them. Despite the fact that all three are eighteen at the start of the series, Emmonds Field is so isolated, safe and peaceful that the boys are actively noted as being exceptionally naive to the outside world. They’re practically toddlers being left alone in a grocery store when they get separated from the actual experienced adults. This is a feature not a bug mind you, when it comes to having protagonists to introduce a world to an audience with. Not to mention that sets up all of the Emmonds Fields kids(this is specifically barring Nynaeve) to have a “Loss of Innocence” character arc, and they all do, but what’s interesting is how each character handles this loss and how long it takes for them to accept this reality. Mat is actually the first of them to really experience the effects of this loss of innocence, due to previously mentioned dagger problems, but let’s ignore the curse and talk about what exactly happened in Shadar Logoth that shook Mat’s worldview so badly. Mat does not start the story as the cynical and sarcastic character we all know and love, he’s introduced to us as being genuinely kindhearted and trusting, like I know it’s easy to forget given EVERYTHING Mat does in the later books, but of the three Ta’veren boys he’s the one who trusts Morraine the most in the beginning. He doesn’t question her motives nor does he seem to have any innate hostility towards her being Aes Sedai like Rand does(though his hostility stems from a place of jealousy and protectiveness of Egwene rather than genuine prejudice). The same goes for Thom as well, Mat doesn’t know anything about this person but he trusts these seemingly well intentioned adults intrinsically. The only person Mat seems to even have the slightest hesitation about is Lan and that’s solely because he’s aloof and doesn’t show much emotion, something that Mat finds extremely off-putting as the type of person who always has Big Feelings, and takes a lot of self esteem in his ability to make others laugh. This makes sense, because at this point they’ve not encountered any darkfriends(that they knew of) so currently the only Evil they encountered has been literal shadowspawn monsters. The Emmonds Field kids have never met a person who had genuinely bad intentions, I’ll-tempered like Cenn Buie, or a bit disreputable like the Coplins and Congars but even these people were at their cores Good People. So why WOULD they distrust these people who say they have their best interests at heart. That’s when we get to Shadar Logoth, and Mat as the ADHD icon he is, immediately gets bored and wants to explore the abandoned city. Rand and Perrin, as the two more mature ones both rightfully call this a bad idea since they were told NOT to go exploring by themselves, but Mat only heard “Trolloks can’t come in here so it’s safe” and nothing else so he decides to go anyways. Rand and Perrin tag along mostly to make sure Mat doesn’t get hurt. And who do they meet except the most suspicious man ever who lures them into his white van- I mean treasure room with the promise of candy-I mean treasure. These boys have never heard of stranger danger in there lives and automatically trust this random man who lurks in alleyways. And wouldn’t you know it, but this guy was not trustworthy at all and tries to kill them resulting in the group getting separated.

Here’s the thing, this is the first time in Mat’s life that he’s ever experienced true man made evil. This wasn’t the dark ones doing, Mordreth was just a guy who had genuinely malicious intentions and took advantage of Mat and his friends. This alone is enough to make him cautious but then throughout their entire road trip to Camlyn they are constantly ambushed by dark friends, in fact after Whitebridge they don’t get any direct encounters with Shadowspawn, they see a few myrrdraal hunting them but they avoid them pretty easily, it’s the People that consistently hurt them; and they are EVERYWHERE. Darkfriends are practically popping up at every street corner and they could be literally anyone. Mat tells Rand at one point that he feels like everyone is out to get them and Rand assures him that not everyone is a darkfriend, but at the same time, I can SEE why Mat would come to that conclusion. I mean is it really paranoia if they actually are out to get you? It wasn’t even just darkfriends, which makes it’s objectively worse, throughout their road-trip May and Rand are constantly met with people who are selfish, greedy, rude and sometimes even outright cruel and a lot of them weren’t darkfriends. They interact with Whitecloaks who are supposed to be righteous and good but are just bullies in shiny armor and carrying around swords. They interact with merchants on the road who take active pleasure in nearly taking out Rand’s eye with whip because the two of them walked a little too close to a cart. An innkeeper who purposefully locked them in a small storage closet so that he could rob them in the middle of the night. Rand remains optimistic but by the time they reach Camlyn Mat had become completely pessimistic and despondent. He didn’t trust anyone, he believed wholeheartedly that everyone wanted to hurt him, everyone except of course Rand.

[davrinassan]

tagged by @arisatominakos to do this lil poll...!!

pick your favourite ship featuring at least one oc of mine :3 i am literally only including my two primary afhiri ships because i think this is a fucking war because i have friends who rlly don't like one and adore the other and theres some clear bias shit going on so I WILL MAKE THEM FIGHT. under the read more is some info about both ships and the characters :) candor is ofc another oc of mine and gale is. mr dekarios

i will not be tagging anyone because this kind of embarrasses me.... LDKSJFSDF wait i lie i tag @aeducanthaig @roseeway i know who null will vote for actually... IF YOU WANNA DO THIS CONSIDER URSELF TAGGED PLEASE!!!!! this is such a good idea i'm just a twit

afhiri is my sweet lil bardic clown tiefling that i feel like everyone who follows me knows intimately by now SL;DFKSDF ... if you don't know much about afhiri.... afhiri is very silly and very sweet, uneducated and purposefully pretends to be much more immature and childish than they actually are because they are quite literally trying to relive their childhood that was stolen from them! they don't like responsibility or emotional conflict! they do like to sing and dance and have fun :3

candor is a solar angel who acts as a steward and avatar for lathander and is very calm and collected .. stern, sotic, quite dry and humourless.... is undergoing a self imposed exile because it feels like it failed lathander (it literally didnt). believes wholly in honour and duty and justice, is absolutely full to the brime with affection and love and shows it wholly through loyal devotion and service .

candor finds afhiri during the exile and decides to protect her from herself (and her wild magic) . candor fully believes they are soulmates and when candor was created at the beginning of the universe it was created with a missing piece, and that afhiri is that piece ..... also candor is 10ft tall and afhiri is 5ft tall so like. :) they are extremely gentle and sweet together. afhiri is not a calm person at all and is quite against anything that tries to get her to be srs at any amounts cuz it frightens them. but candor is different. candor threatens everything afhiri is trying to build (running away from themselves and what they were forced to become for their family) but afhiri doesn't run from candor.... it is security, it is safety. it is ok to be their entire self around candor. candor leaves at the end of the game feeling worthy of returning to lathanders side, and promises afhiri that when she dies, it will guide her through the upper planes and they will spend eternity together

afhiri x gale is super funny to me i rewrote canon a bit with it so picture this . wyll and karlach are partners in my canon, and afhiri is acting as a sort of replacement for karlach in intimacy between the couple . gale sees this as afhiri being a third partner in the relationship and grows jealous because he likes afhiri and believes he could be better for her so the act 2 scene is him confessing his feelings and asking for her to give him a chance because he knows they'll create beautiful magic together.. and afhiri laughs in his face cuz she's just fwb with them man. god gale ur so silly. i like silly. mwah mwah anyway that's how that relationship starts. i like afhiri x gale because to me its about keeping gale young... she is fun and full of energy and life and gale has kept himself locked away for a year to wither and wilt and afhiri is a burning sun who makes him feel alive ... this relationship ends up quite toxic however, a certain event happens that causes gale to kill afhiri (and candor gets involved its a whole drama) and gale feels so much guilt and fear at the realisation of death separating them that they have limited time hes back on his god bullshit ^_^ though it's not all bad. in my canon afhiri and gale ascend together and candor and afhiri are reunited in the upper planes but its a bit different :) (candor isnt happy, but devoted itself to afhiri instead of lathander all the same) .

as u can see afhiri x candor and afhiri x gale has quite a lot of overlapping and theres some poly stuff going on here i could talk about it forever.....

[solar-nightengale]

Hi, I’m new in this tag kinda and new to meta-writing overall, but not only is the August brain rot really strong but one particular part of his entire character has been on my mind for a whole weekend. Please take this as mostly an offering of very spilled thoughts cause I couldn't keep them to myself anymore, LMAO. Particularly the thing that's on my brain is his guilt

I would also like to make note of and thank @ lizardthelizard And her glorious set of tags here for setting off my spiral tonight and also when she first sent them because my goodness this is truly an eye-opener. Thank you, buddy 💖

Gosh though, August’s guilt and self-criticism of himself and his actions is something that really fascinates me personally, and just thinking of it being the cause of what turns him back to wood is both mind-blowing but it just makes so much sense. He may be real because of magic but who’s to say it’s just the magical conditions that are holding him back and not the high as heck expectations that he feels were set for him and he set up for himself.

When it feels like you can't mess up sometimes it can feel like you're stuck in place Or that your screw ups means you can't change, that you're not good, that maybe you don't deserve to be considered good and that your various flaws are all that others would see you FOR!!

Maybe it's different to anxiety but idk it’s what caught my attention about him even more than what his character already offered up in s1!

He was given this like 

Idea that he needs to be "Brave" and "Truthful" and "Selfless" all the time or else he cannot be human 

Does it work like that? no, there's no human on EARTH that's all three of those things all the time, we've all had moments of weakness and gave in 

But what does he know? Most of his life he spent on his own and as a puppet, he was expected to understand the ways of being a human and GOODNESS knows how short a time he was with his dad before he was THRUST into a world and forced once again to stand on his own two feet and expected to just, you know, know how to act once again 

He's followed by expectations that he finds himself struggling to meet because he doesn't know what the limit is or how to meet them, and sometimes if not all of the times the temptations are just better and easier 

And it's expected!!!

He stepped into TLWM as a child with no idea of what he’s getting into with no prior knowledge, no adult, no nothing.

But omg, he drags himself down so much about it because he can’t meet those expectations the way he would want to and because of that because literally who did he have to tell him that it's all okay? That you can make mistakes and move on from them? That you can make up for your mistakes and forgive yourself for them?

Did he have anyone at all? Cause The show sure didn't show him having anyone

We see one woman in Thailand but even after he discovers he's turning into wood she's no longer around, so like she's probably about as fleeting of a relationship as anything else

Imagine going 28 years at first ignoring all your problems and then the horror and thoughts that you’re not good enough catch up to you one morning and the more you see yourself a failure, the more you sink into that spiral the harder it feels to breathe.

[whoishotteranimepolls]

Major Update

The request will be opening soon because I'm down to like the most obscure requests that I'm actually struggling to find photos for. So in preparation of this I have to get a lot of announcements out of the way so this post might make a lot of people angry. Might make some of you happy But I need to get this out of the way before I open up the request again.

Let's start with the things that I know are going to piss people off as of right now. No. Webcomics no. Webtoons. Yes, I do know several webtoons/webcomics have been turned into anime. Those will be allowed but that's because they're anime now. Also no mechs. However, this is just for now. Remember I've only been doing this blog for maybe 3 months. So let me get more into the groove of things before we add on all of those things. So maybe when I've been doing this for 6 months to a year we can start allowing that Web comics, webtoons and mechs but I'm already struggling with keeping up with requests and keeping enough stuff in the queue as is. So I don't want to complicate things even further and make things as easy as I can on myself. Now there is a reason for this because I may be changing jobs soon and I don't want to have to put the blog on temporary hiatus during that transition.

Now on to the next thing and this is probably going to make a lot of people happy but people please do not make me regret this decision. But, after hearing the many lamentations from mostly the Naruto fandom, much personal debate and seeing how a similar blog handles things. I have decided to lower the minimum age for the polls to 16. Now that means minors can and probably will be matched up against each other and against 18+ characters. Please don't come at me about that choice, these characters are fictional. You can't hurt them, and a blog like this isn't going to normalize preying on minors. YES it's wrong in real life, but anime teenagers are not normal teenagers. I literally just finished an anime about a assassin trying to get back to his wife. He was 16 and had a wife I swore he was at least 20 sometimes anime ages don't make sense. Please don't start anything or I will start blocking. But for those of you who don't want to participate in those polls, I will make a special tag so you can block all polls that have confirmed 16 and 17-year-old characters So you can block the tag so you don't have to see it and participate You will be able to find it when I update the rules post in the next day or two when I have everything finalized. Now this is subject to change if people do not behave. So do not start attacking me because I allow this or I will bump that age back up to 18. Do not make me regret this

Now when it comes to requests you have 10 characters and can request up to Four-way matchups. I don't care how you break that down so you can do two four-way polls and a two-way poll or request five two-way polls don't care. Figure it out. I'm pretty sure everyone can do math but the max is 10 characters However, you want to break it down with two-way, three-way and four-way polls.

I'm also setting a limit on how many times you can request a day. Please only do it twice. That's up to 20 characters. So everyone gets a chance to request polls

Remember Six-Way polls are not something you can request directly. They are something I make as a special thing, when the queue leans too much into one character or fandom. However, you can suggest a theme. I have done fire and ice powers. You all seem to like the goth girl and the anime men in suits. You get the idea. You can always put some theme ideas at the bottom of your request. So I can add them to my list of themes that I have saved when I need to make a six-way poll

I think that is all the major announcements So now with these updates everyone can start thinking of the new matchup request because they will be opening up soon and that request box fills up fast

[pumpumdemsugah]

Sorry I hate ' essays ' like that

It always just feels like they cobbled together every popular criticism of anything online that specifically mentions women and make sure you say intersectional but nothing that specific.

#Female rage isn't what got Black men lynched but cold hard white supremacy. We need to recentre white supremacy in these discussions. Do you think those people believed what they were actually saying all the time? They didn't give a fuck if that Black man did or didn't do shit. They needed a pretense for horrific torture and murder. They were superior ( apparently) so could do what they wanted. They wanted blood, humiliation and to use fear to control Black people and all parts of the white community were enthusiastic participants to make that happen. The stereotype of the pure innocent white woman doesn't work if there's no Black threat or animalistic opposite. White supremacy was essential.

This can be said about literally any oppression. It doesn't stop it from being a facet of that oppression.

???? Is this a real criticism? Why limit it to women, because this is specifically about women, that's how talking about a group of people works. Did anyone make these claims ? Why are we strawmanning a glib hashtag as if it was some movement that started out deeper than women online mentioning women's rage ? We can't do female rage because other people are oppressed. Sorry you're dumb

I was half hoping maybe this would be an exploration ( no I wasn't lol this was exactly as swallow as I'd expect but let me continue to lie lol) about how and what anger means for women. How anger is weaponised against black women in particular and how useful rage is and isnt for us but I still think Black women should be allowed full and human representation including rage. A criticism I have of #femalerage is it's often women being denigrated first and then she snaps. We don't actually have that many depictions of female psychopathy or killing in cold blood. Women literally do not talk as much as men in film and that's why so many women online have latched onto any crumb of anger, there isn't much out there. A lot of the female characters that are tagged #female rage are murdered, beaten and their violence is never narratively condoned. It ends up reinforcing in the ideal that #female rage is bad because they're punished for it anyway.

A lot of misogyny is centred on the body, and ideas of inferiority around women's body - that's not gender essentialism. That's an important way misogyny functions so can we all stop playing dumb about this? Large and I mean large chunks of Black feminism is very literary about the body but none of you read enough to even know that but you love Black feminist somehow even though a lot of black feminist thought is antithetical to this idea.

Nahh some of you just need to admit your fundamental problem is shit being about women ( or finding this cringe ) because none of these criticisms were particularly deep or argued convincingly. It relied on the audience being exposed to certain talking points before so filling in the blanks to make up for how swallow that was and expecting agreement because the right combination of phrases in buzzwords were mentioned.

I'm uncomfortable when women are mentioned hottake number 975,899

[adozentothedawn]

Six-song soundtrack

Rules: If you're tagged, make a new post with links to music and/or lyrics describing the following:

An event that defines your character's past

How your character sees themselves

How others view them

Their closest relationship (platonic or romantic)

A major fight scene

End credits song

Tagged by @solas-backpack-mug (and others but I never got around to it and now I forgot, sorry :( ), thanks!

Favaen (with Emblyn making a guest appearance)

So this was hard, on the one hand because I didn't really have anything on hand and on the other because when I went looking I suddenly had a bunch for the same point.

The Shore - Basia Bulat

Dakara Hitori Ja Nai - Christina Vee (Little Glee Monster)

Rise and Fall - Black Water County

We'll Meet Again - Laura Brehm and TheFatRat

Burn It Down - Vixy and Tony

Like The Dawn - The Oh Hellos

Throwing a tag towards @adraveins and @stylishanachronism for some good music recs. 👀

An event that defines their past

(This was so hard to limit, holy shit)

The Shore - Basia Bulat

There is no one who will take me by that shore Close to the smoke, far from the fires of your harbour But if I am awake this time I'll know All over your eyes, a storm is rolling over, rolling over

Emblyn, dearly regretting her decisions.

Oh you can take away the divine my dear And comb your hair And I won't mind at all Even when the thought's behind I came just to remind you I love you so

And while she does regret a lot, this one thing she clings onto.

How they see themselves

Dakara Hitori Ja Nai - Christina Vee

(an english cover translation)

Once I hated everything Sadness seemed my destiny Couldn't see the beauty all around me (If only) my future spans in front of me A crossroad branching endlessly The road is paved, the course is set I'll grab my dreams, the time is now

Favaen used to have severe emotional management problems and had no idea what to do with herself, a problem she eventually worked out with the help of her mentor and mother figure.

But those empty words are not a plan Lucky stars don't care So don't rely on counting them I'm thinking way too hard about my past I gotta push myself, I'm facing my worst fear, oh Don't care if I'm crying (I'm crying) I'm flying (I'm flying), I made my mind up Trust me, I will keep trying I'm stronger than I know (I'm stronger now) Don't care if I'm lonely (I'm lonely) It's only (It's only) the end of the old me It's time to let her go Say goodbye! (Say goodbye, say goodbye!) Love never lies

She is inherently optimistic because she made the decision and effort to be. Despite her past (both personal and Emblyn's) still on weigh on her, she does her best to move and make the future a better one.

How others view them

Rise and Fall - Black Water County

Listen here, tell me dear What have you now got to fear? Took you long to realise Take it one day at a time verse You've been wasting the minutes In the hours of your days Look around and you'll find That it's just another way

But there's something on my mind That I need to leave behind So tear the page, hit erase 'Til the day you hear me call Make a promise that you'll be The best to rise and fall

Favaen makes herself a turning point for the people around her. An opportunity to do better, to move on, to be someone you's rather be. Be that for Edér who ties himself to her in turn with such a force he literally sails across the ocean on the vague hope it might save her, or for some random bandit who gets to make the choice to leave, live another day, and never see her again.

Their closest relationship

We'll Meet Again - Laura Brehm and TheFatRat

This one had a lot of options, both in relationship and song (Edér being a good contender for example) but I realised I already had this one saved and it's too good not to take so Eothas it is. This is probably pretty self explanatory.

Suddenly you're nowhere to be found I turn around and everything has changed Looking for a way to work it out I'm trying to find some peace to navigate Everything we wanted turned to gold (Turned to gold) The path we chose, the future on our side Never thought I'd do this on my own (On my own) But now I wield the sword you left behind Dark for the sunrise Clouds for a blue sky Space for the travelling star Strong from the inside You're still my life-line I feel you wherever you are The oak tree where I met you And the writing on the statue I still remember every word you said I'm not a soldier, but I'm fighting Can you hear me through the silence? I won't give up 'cause there will be a day We'll meet again

Fight Scene

Burn It Down - Vixy and Tony

This was kinda hard for different reasons. I eventually landed on this one because it fits her as a character and is energetic and inspirational. Some expamples:

The legend of the firebird Is one of transformation If you dare to take the journey And you give the wolf his due Let the flame inspire For you are your own creation Throw your fear upon the pyre And let it rise as something new

So you think you don't burn bright enough? I tell you it's not true Burn it down, burn it down, burn it down Throw your fear upon the fire and burn it down Throw your voice out to the wind Feel the heat upon your skin As you hunger, so begin Burn it down

End Credits

Like The Dawn - The Oh Hellos

(The Oh Hellos are such a treasure trove for this)

I was sleeping in the garden when I saw you first He'd put me deep, deep under so that he could work And like the dawn you broke the dark and my whole earth shook I was sleeping in the garden when I saw you At last, at last Bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh, at last

Imagry of how Eothas kept Emblyn's soul with him repaired it over time and how she was eventually reborn as Favaen with pieces of him holding her together, making them essential soul twins.

You were the brightest shade of sun I had ever seen Your skin was gilded with the gold of the richest kings And like the dawn you woke the world inside of me You were the brightest shade of sun when I saw you

Being a form of soul twins it made Favaen absolutely miserable to be apart from him (something he didn't consider at all as a possibility cause he is in fact, not very smart) and eventually officially joining the clergy was an incredible relief for her.