#writing this was cathartic

[fandomfreakstudios]

Swap!BJ needs more love and stat

Love as in crippling trauma

Beatrice getting dementia… god I think that would fuck him up so bad. He and his mother’s relationship… was interesting. It certainly wasn’t as cut-and-dry fucked up as classing Boj, I honestly think that level of grey area makes it so much more interesting to explore.

I feel like even if Bea doesn’t have a Henrietta to project Bojack onto, she still wouldn’t recognize him. Dementia is a bitch like that, it’ll find a way.

Bojack had spent his whole life as this kind, sweet, eager people-pleaser who’s fundamental philosophy that everyone (even his hard to please mother) is truly a good person deep down. This is how he knows to cope with his mother’s sternness and high expectations, by making himself believe that even the roughest people have good in their hearts.

He has built his entire life, his philosophy, his ways of interacting with others, and his career in a way that he thinks would make his mother happy and approve of him. Only for every one of those efforts to be in vein, as she just forgets him anyways.

I feel like Bojack would of course move his mom in with him and Diane. He would try DESPERATELY to make her recognize him even a bit but she just… doesn’t. And furthermore she treats Bojack with the sort of apathy of someone you have no recollection of or feelings about. Gone are the days of Bea’s sternness guidance and expectations that ultimately come from wanting to see her son succeed, all to be replaced with a hollow nothingness.

Bojack would be fucked up over it. Deep cracks would begin to form in his whole personality. He’s lost without having his mother’s expectation to live up to. He thrived only under the iron fist she provided. And now he doesn’t know what to do and where to go.

His wife said he should put her back in the home, that his mental and physical health is suffering too much because of the situation. But he ignores her. He can’t believe she would even suggest abandoning his mother. Now he’s fighting with his wife. He’s lost, and alone, and he just wants his mom back so everything makes sense again.

There’s no quick fix to this. The pain of losing a family member runs deep. But if there’s one thing that Beatrice left him with, it’s the knowledge that through hard work, perseverance, and taking charge of your own destiny, you can handle anything

[inhurtandincomfort]

More stoic characters should have intense mental breakdowns. And I don't mean soft, pretty weeping. I want crying, oh yes. But I also want yelling. I want flushed faces and bloodshot eyes, full on sobbing as they scream and fight.

I want objects thrown against the wall. I want hurtful words to be exchanged, words that they don't mean, not really, but they're hurting so much and they don't know how to handle it so they just lash out at anyone who dares to come near. If they have good friends, they'll all get through it. If they don't, well... it might just be the end of an already tenuous relationship.

Characters who are always so, so strong, holding it all in until it builds up and builds up, their façade slowly begins to break, like spidery cracks crawling through glass growing increasingly more fragile until one day it becomes too much.

They shatter.

[bunnieswithknives]

Thanks.

Prev

[ghstbrd]

saturday morning

[uisceb]

And if I were to write a gelphie 1940s murder mystery featuring Elphaba as a private eye investigating the murder of her sister with the help of her rescue cat, Lion, and Glinda as an intrepid social-climbing reporter who likes to imagine herself as a femme fatale but is utterly lacking the suavity to actually be a femme fatale…Would anyone read it or would I just be shouting into the void?

Supporting evidence:

Elphie in her lil trench coat putting on her lil hat about to go solve crime with her femme fatale gf

Elphie on her way to work solving crime with her lil buddy Lion

Ace Attorney Fiyero Tigelaar and Lion becoming besties for life

Glinda trying to be a diabolical Femme Fatale seducing Elphaba but forgetting how because Elphaba looks Like That and it’s hard to be diabolical when your target looks Like That

Really just struggling to get her stupid coat off so she can solve crime

Trying to solve crime but her unofficial self-appointed assistant keeps flirting with her for confusifying reasons

...Actually never mind, literally the second I finished making this post I immediately wrote out the first chapter and posted it on ao3 because I have zero self control.

It's here for anyone who wants to read it.

[crepesuzette2023]

Here is a quote I think of every time I see these pictures. "The rumor since has been that I edged [Stuart Sutcliffe] out of the band, because we certainly did have our difficulties. For me, it was mainly because I didn't think he was a very good musician, which he wasn't, and he admitted it. So, for me, that caused problems, because being a—I mean, you could say being a perfectionist, but actually asking the bass player to play in the same key as us isn't really looking for perfection. It's quite a mild request." — Sir Paul McCartney, The Lyrics podcast, "Michelle," April 10, 2024.

[boba-pearl-writes]

Bug - 11/11/24 - word count: 163 - @rosekillermicrofic

“Look, Bat. It reminds me of you.”

“It’s a… beetle,” Barty said, confused, looking at where Evan had knelt down to look at a spot on the pavement. He was looking at a beetle with a deep green, almost shiny looking shell.

“It’s the Green June Beetle,” Evan said, almost a whisper. “It has the same color as your eyes.” Barty knelt down next to him, and soon they were both just staring at the little green beetle.

“Huh.”

Evan cast a petrificus totalus charm over it, rendering it completely still.

“Why’d you do that?” Barty asked, confused. Evan pocketed the bug and looked Barty in the eye.

“So I can take off the shell for my collection. It’s beautiful,” Evan said, his face a mask. “Like your eyes,” he whispered, after a bit of thought.

Barty smiled and stood up, holding out a hand to pull Evan up as well. “You think my eyes are beautiful?”

Evan smiled back at him. “...Yeah.”

[seraphinesaintclair]

“Ruby Throated” by Seraphine Saintclair

[lycandrophile]

Songs sung in T voices? You mean just regular male voices because trans men are men

imagine being so miserable that you see a post about trans joy and pride in transmasculinity and the first thing you think is “i’m going to find a way to see this as transphobia instead”.

i have a t voice. my voice is distinctly different from most cis men’s voices in a way that a lot of other trans people’s voices are distinctly different after being on t. a lot of us have voices with a unique quality to them. the claim that me, a trans man with a t voice, talking about voices like mine somehow implies that my own gender isn’t real…is just fucking wild, honestly.

i think t voices are BEAUTIFUL. i love them so much, having my own voice sound like that was genuinely one of the things i was the most excited about when i started t because to me, that voice is the kind i heard when i watched videos made by other trans guys that taught me about what was possible for me and met other trans guys irl for the first time and got advice on transitioning or just life from them. it’s such a comforting sound and so important to me.

nothing about recognizing that distinctive quality implies that trans men aren’t real men. i have a t voice just like i have a deep voice, a quiet voice, a tonally expressive voice — it’s just a descriptor for one of many things that can make a voice unique. my voice is a “male voice” and it’s also a t voice because i’m a man whose voice has been affected by going on t in a distinctive way. the two aren’t in any way at odds with each other.

if i described my chest as a post-op chest, would you come into my inbox saying “you mean just a regular male chest?” i have a feeling you probably wouldn’t because on some level, even you get that talking about unique parts of living in a trans body doesn’t invalidate who we are. it’s fine if you personally wouldn’t want to describe your voice that way because it makes you dysphoric or isn’t applicable to your voice or isn’t as meaningful to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s morally incorrect for me to do so.

trans bodies are wonderful. visible (or in this case, audible) transness is wonderful. it’s not a bad thing to have features that are distinctively trans, and having those features doesn’t make you less of a man. we don’t have to reject our transness or be exactly like cis men to be real men because cis manhood isn’t the gold standard, it’s just one of many ways to be a man.

(also, not everyone who goes on t is a trans man, so not every t voice is a male voice. it’s funny how the people who get mad at me for being proud of my t voice are always the same ones who have really gender essentialist and binaristic views on transitioning.)

so no, i don’t mean “regular male voices”, i mean fucking t voices because that was a post about unashamed in-your-face proud transmasculinity, not transmasculinity that tries to make itself indistinguishable from cis manhood. please keep your assimilationist bullshit away from my trans joy, thank you very much.

[drachis917]

Baby fanfic writer me, not understanding the concept of romance: I really love these two characters and their dynamic together, so I think I have to write them as dating.

Now fanfic writer me, aroace: fuck shipping, these bitches are together and they're best friends but it's all platonic. Reject romance, embrace complex relationships and friendly/familial love!

[bucksboobs]

And this isn’t new to 911 obviously because as long as I’ve been in fandom (12 years) the loudest voices in most of them have been people that love gay ships but don’t quite see gay men as people, much less people that could be in the fandom. And it’s been dressed up a lot of ways: making one side of the m/m ship more feminine the other more masculine, fanon characterizations that basically turn one of the men into a gender neutral at best self insert for the fandom, self-lubricating rectums becoming a genre in and of itself, outright apathy towards canon gay characters in favor of the fandom-dominant ship that better fit the “Destiel Formula,” etc but it all came back to the same underlying issue: a significant portion of fandom doesn’t view gay men in anything but the abstract, as LEGO bricks to be reassembled at will to better suit their whims or as dolls to smash together.

At the end of the day, every problem I have with fandom seems to come back to the knowledge that some of them don’t see me as a gay man as a person, but as fic trope. And that’s exhausting.

[dahlia-tourism-board]

You look just like your father: Sam Collins

"You look exactly like your father, boy. don't let anyone tell you different."

[CW: implied child abuse and neglect]

Sam is twelve years old, hiding in his room. His parents are fighting, and judging by the breaking glass and pained groans, it's sounding like he'll have to hide for the rest of the day.

His stomach rumbles. He can't remember the last time he's eaten a proper meal. He thinks about climbing out the window to run off to his grandma's again, but his parents are in the living room. There's a chance they might see him, and he can't risk those consequences.

Hours pass, and the sun begins to set. He hears more arguing, then a door slamming shut. A moment of blessed silence, then-

"Samuel Collins, you get down here! Now!"

Sam scrambles from his bed and races downstairs, knowing what could happen if he's not fast enough for his mother's liking.

Of course, she's still furious on seeing him. She's got cuts on her arms and a black eye, but her knuckles are just as bruised. She stares him down as she holds a plate shard in her hand.

"You clean this up, you hear?" She gestures to the broken plates with the shard in her hand. "I'm headin' out to replace what your idiot father broke, and this better be spotless when I get back, or else."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good." She drops the shard, letting it shatter even more and laughing when he jumps. "Now get to it."

Sam grabs a broom and a dustpan. Once his mother leaves, he can sneak some food from the fridge. For now, he sets on cleaning.

His mother makes herself proper to go out, makeup on her eye and driving gloves over her knuckles. Sam thinks she'll ignore him entirely as she steps toward the front door. But just as she gets to the door, she turns back to him, furious, her jaw set.

"You look exactly like your father, boy," She snaps. "Don't let anyone tell you different."

She slams the door closed. Sam stands still as he listens to the car drive away. He knows he needs to clean before she gets back, and he needs to eat as much as he can get away with.

Instead, he walks into the bathroom. He looks into the mirror and tries to see what his mother was talking about. Both his parents have brown eyes, he thinks. He looks like both of them, and that roils in his guts.

The urge to break the mirror thunders in his mind. But if he did, he'd be no better then his parents. And grandma Adeline would be so disappointed in him. So he does what she taught him, takes deep breaths until the thunder in his mind calms.

He eats, cleans all the glass off the floor, and locks himself in his room, all before his parents get back. He hears them arguing again, but he tunes them out, finally falling asleep.

Years later, and he's looking at a photograph, one of only a handful of items he'd brought with him when he'd run away from home. He's surrounded by boxes, his mate having just moved in with him. They were planning to unpack properly tomorrow, and something about sharing a home with someone like them made him feel reflective.

As he looks at the photo, his mate, his Darlin' comes up and sits next to him. They look at the photograph curiously, but they don't ask anything. They never push when it comes to his past, knowing what it's like to carry a history of hurt. He was so grateful that they understood, that they let him take the lead.

But he wanted them to understand this too.

"Darlin', this was my grandma Adeline. She was good to me, when I was a kid and I didn't have much good to go off of."

"...huh."

His Darlin' sits up, and looks from the photograph to Sam's face and back again.

"Maybe this sounds weird, but you look just like her." His mate, fully focused, points to different parts of the photo. They mean it, Sam realizes. "Look, in the nose, and the cheekbones. She's even smiling the way you do, with the left side more than the right."

Sam didn't even notice he's started crying until he feels their thumbs lightly brushing away his tears. They're worried, asking if he's okay and apologizing until he smiles through his tears.

"Darlin', I think that's about the nicest thing I've ever heard."

[flowerofenigmas]

It's 2 am and i feel a little freaky erm

If Harbingers are ranked by strength all I'm saying is that you could totally 100% sit on Dottore's face with your full weight and he'd be okay with that. Hell he might even grab your thighs and pull you down if you try not to put your full weight on him... Sit means sit damn it.

[marley-manson]

the topic is Trapper and the army as foils, you have three hours, go

In no small part the satire of Mash, particularly in the first half of the show, is tied up with gender performance.

The army represents traditional, stifling and violent masculinity. This is shown through everything from freudian jokes about guns (eg Frank and Margaret's flirtations in The Sniper or The Gun), to Margaret trying to cajole Hawkeye into performing a more traditional standard of masculinity while treating him like a soldier in Comrades in Arms Part 2, to many jokes and comments about (usually) Hawkeye not being a real man in contrast to army standards and various specific army personnel (eg Lyle in Springtime, Flagg in White Gold), to Frank and Margaret's worship of the masculinity of the army ("He's twice the man you'll ever be," re: Flagg and Hawkeye, Margaret's lust for MacArthur, Frank pursuing the sniper in The Sniper in an attempt to be a "real man" in Margaret's eyes, etc) to many jokes positioning the military as a sexually aggressive man pursuing Hawkeye ("Sure, the sun the moon the stars, your high school letterman jacket. Same deal I promised nurse Baker." "A receipt please, and promise you'll go out with other doctors," etc.)

In contrast, the main characters all fail to perform traditional gender in some way, from crossdressing to immaturity to indecisiveness to peacefulness to Margaret's masculinity and Frank's pathetic failure to live up to his own masculine ideals, to just about everything about Hawkeye. His cowardliness, his jokes about not being a real man, his jokes about taking the feminine role in sexual encounters with men and women, even multiple double entendres about his average at best penis size.

Trapper is the most traditionally masculine of the main cast. He still subverts masculinity in some subtle ways here and there, such as the occasional feminizing joke and mentions of not being in great shape, but overall he's the more butch counterpart to Hawkeye's fem. He plays the role of boxer while Hawkeye plays the role of diva in their respective manager/star roleplaying episodes. He's broader and buffer and plays football, often seen playing catch with someone while walking around the compound, while Hawkeye disdains sports and doesn't participate. He reads Field and Stream which Hawkeye derides in Alcoholics Unanimous while making a wry comment about shaving his armpits. A past lover nicknamed him Big John.

And there are many, many jokes about Hawkeye and Trapper being sexual partners. The recurring Uncle Trapper and Aunt Hawkeye gag, if my father sees this you'll have to marry me, for me? only if you put those on, your father and I will tell you what we did to have you, that's when I fell in love with him, etc etc etc. It's constant. In these jokes Hawkeye usually takes the feminine role, though not strictly every time ("Me and the missus," is one exception in As You Were, the dance in Yankee Doodle Doctor is another).

Trapper's masculinity is differentiated from traditional military masculinity in a few ways. Most obviously, Trapper abhors the military's violence. He never uses guns and mocks Frank's obsession with them, he's a healer rather than a soldier, and he's disgusted by the results of military violence on the men on his operating table.

He's also secure in himself. The military's brand of masculinity is strongly characterized by insecurity and overcompensation. Frank is the main representative of this military insecurity - a coward who insists he's brave (The Army Navy Game), a man who clings to a phallic gun to compensate for his sexual and gendered inadequacies (a main theme of The Sniper, perfectly mirrored when the army itself comes in with a vastly disproprotionately powerful automatic machine gun on a helicopter to shoot down one sixteen year old), a homophobe repressing his own attraction to men (As You Were, the original script of George), etc. We also see this in Flagg, who implicitly sublimates sexual urges into violence (seen when he suggestively caresses his gun while describing how he wants to torture a boy in Officer of the Day).

Trapper doesn't need to overcompensate. He's well-endowed physically, he's portrayed as a competent and considerate lover, he's a brave man who doesn't mind being seen as a coward, and he may or may not be attracted to men but either way he's not a homophobe (George) and he doesn't express his sexuality through violence. When Margaret proves herself stronger than him, his response is to be impressed rather than offended (Bombed). When he dances with Hawkeye for a gag, he doesn't mind letting Hawkeye lead.

He's also differentiated in terms of tradition, with the mliitary representing a more propagandic 50s traditionalism, and Trapper representing a 70s, countercultural freedom from tradition. We see this in the way Trapper has plenty of sex despite being married, while adultery is a court-martial offense in the military. It's notable that he's open and carefree about it, while Frank and Margaret are surreptitious and hypocritical in their affair. This lack of traditionalism is also shown in his disrespect for authority, often in direct contrast to Frank and Margaret's worship of it, and his allyship to George who the military would persecute for his sexuality.

So ultimately we can see that while Trapper and the military are both examples of masculine performance, Trapper's masculinity differs from the military's in being more flexible, less violent, less traditional, and more secure. The military's masculinity is far more toxic than Trapper's, particularly in the context of 70s counterculture media, which aligns womanizing with sexual liberation rather than a lack of respect for women, accurately or not.

This contributes to their respective dynamics with Hawkeye.

Hawkeye, we've established, is usually more feminine, and there are a myriad of jokes characterizing Trapper as his sexual partner, as well as the military as a sexual pursuer.

The jokes Hawkeye and Trapper make about their relationship tend towards cozy domesticity. They're Radar's "aunt and uncle," they directly roleplay marriage ("Martha, we're going to have to move, the people upstairs are impossible,") and less directly behave as though married (the bickering in Alcoholics Unanimous, the discussion about naming their pony in Life With Father). Occasionally they're treated as a healthy couple in contrast to Frank and Margaret's toxicity ("While I'm gone, promise you'll go out with other doctors," vs "Touch anyone else and I'll cut off your hands" in Aid Station).

In some instances the jokes lean towards predatory - "If you're trying to get me drunk, it'll work," or "Who is this man in bed with me?" "I followed you home from the movies," but they're always playful, always fond. If Hawkeye takes on a submissive or victimized role in these jokes, it's one he has fun with and discards just as easily in the context of the rest of his relationship with Trapper.

So, it's important to note that Hawkeye and Trapper support each other and look after each other in an equal, enthusiastic friendship. From Trapper ensuring Hawkeye gets to sleep in Doctor Pierce and Mr. Hyde, to Hawkeye supporting Trapper when he wants to adopt a child, to Trapper right at Hawkeye's side as they attempt to procure an incubator, they are there for each other every step of the way. If their relationship is a marriage in some ways, it's a healthy, strong, and non-traditional marriage, an equal and open partnership free of jealousy and insecurities.

Compare that to the military's relationship with Hawkeye. In jokes it's characterized as powerful and predatory, far from an equal partnership. Sometimes it approaches positive - in Carry on Hawkeye, much of the humour is derived from Hawkeye and Margaret's gendered role reversal as she assumes military command of the unit. Hawkeye playfully calls her sir, seductively lies on her desk like a secretary in a porn film, and most notably treats an immunization shot as sexual penetration in a prolonged gag about sexual role reversal. Hawkeye has fun playing a sexually submissive role to a representative of military authority in this episode, but it is a submissive role.

Several of the one-off jokes have a similar sensibility, such as the double entendre of "My bellybutton's been puckering and unpuckering all day," in response to a representative of MacArthur assuming their excitement over the general's arrival to the unit, or Hawkeye's "Okay, take me, I'm yours," to Colonel Flagg. They demonstrate a willingness to play the receptive role on Hawkeye's part, but they also, pointedly, disturb the object of the jokes.

When Hawkeye makes these jokes that sexualize military authority, he's attempting to be provocative as well as defiantly drawing disruptive attention to his own powerlessness as a drafted surgeon. The power dynamic between Hawkeye and the authority of the military only goes one way, and Hawkeye gets a kick out of pointing it out in ways that perturb the representatives of that authority, but it's a power dynamic that takes its toll on him.

Many of Mash's plotlines revolve around Hawkeye rebelling and attempting to seize some scrap of agency back from the military. Adam's Ribs, for example, in which he starts a mild riot over the food he's being fed and spends the episode attempting to procure barbecue ribs from Chicago (which Trapper procures for him), or Back Pay where he tries to charge the military for his forced labour. A particularly notable example is Some 38th Parallels, in which Hawkeye complains about being paid the equivalent of a nickel per operation, and his frustration manifests in impotency until he can perform a gesture of rebellion against the military.

One unfortunate consistency of these episodes is that the army ultimately retains its power. When Hawkeye achieves his goals, it's only in small ways that do little more than satisfy his own need to assert his sense of self. Often, Hawkeye doesn't achieve his goal at all, but is thwarted by the army, such as in For Want of a Boot. In every instance he remains powerless in comparison to the authority of the military.

So the context in which Hawkeye makes these sexualized jokes about the military literally fucking him is one of abject helplessness. In a sense, all he's capable of is pointing out what the military is doing and putting it in his own, audacious terms. He's not capable of preventing it. His jokes usually have an edge of bitterness to them in delivery, and when they don't, that tone is imparted anyway by the greater context.

With Trapper, Hawkeye can play-act a marriage or an assault, but in either case he's an enthusiastically consenting, equal partner. Trapper's performance of masculinity allows for Hawkeye to take any role from victim to wife to husband, and enables Trapper to respond in kind from a position of equality and respect. The military, in its insecure, domineering performance of masculinity, is a dictatorial authority, never allowing Hawkeye perform any role but a feminized, victimized one, and only ever giving him the choice of whether to perform with a wry smile or a sneer.

In short, Trapper is the cool, considerate service top to the military's insecure domineering boyfriend.

I'm tagging everyone who enabled this lol, share the blame. @beansterpie @majorbaby @professormcguire @rescue-ram

[broareweabouttoviberightnow]

y'all know what time it is!!! TID BIT TUESDAY!!! CW: blood 'n one gross lil mention of a nose breakin'!

"What, you gonna go home 'n cry to your mama?" Pony braces himself with one scraped 'n bleedin' palm against the sidewalk. Gravel diggin' into his fingers 'n when he lifts it the bloody handprint remains.

There's a loose half circle of boys all older than Pony by at least a year or two blockin' his only exit- across the lot, over the fence, 'n two blocks home. Their ring leader, some snot-nosed soc who'd had it out for Pony since the moment they laid eyes on each other, jostles one of his posse 'n cackles an ear splittin' laugh.

"God," Pony runs a hand under his nose, scowls when it comes away stained red. "I'd thought the circus had rolled outta town. Someone must have told me wrong considerin' all the clowns are right here in front of me."

The boy stops hootin' 'n glares down at Pony, eyes darkenin'. "You fuckin' asked for it now, Curtis." He gives him another kick in the ribs that has Pony chokin'. He drops down to meet Pony's eyes, crouchin' close. "I was wrong. You ain't gonna go home 'n cry to mama. 'Cause you ain't got one. Shame. Though she wouldn't much like you fightin', would she? God, disapointin'."

Pony grins, blood on his teeth, 'n spits in his face. "Don't worry about my ma. I got two older brothers 'n you know what? It's damn fine with them." 'N Pony's laughter melts right into the sound the boy's nose makes as it cracks under his fist.