#CAPE DISCOURSE

[thesparkwhowalks]

OK, so if you don't follow such things, there's a new Batman cartoon on Amazon Prime as of yesterday. I watched the first three episodes last night, highly recommend. But certain sections of the internet are flipping out over The Penguin being a cisgender woman in this version. I felt that the series actually used that to great effect, meaning the change is much better thought out than her name ("Oswalda").

But, as you might imagine, a certain sector of the nerdosphere is very much upset by this. Including this hot take I saw on Reddit:

I found this take to be hilarious for three reasons:

The showrunner of Batman: Caped Crusader is Bruce Timm. Who was, as you may be aware, the showrunner of Batman: The Animated Series thirty years ago.

Batman The Animated Series took massive liberties with "classic" characters all the time, including completely reinventing Mr. Freeze.

Including gender swapping the calendar-themed villain Calendar Man into Calendar Girl for an episode making a commentary on misogynistic ageism in the entertainment industry.

[shayera-the-magpie]

Show creators are allowed to explore different versions of the character. Especially when the source material retcons every few decades.

[orion-nottson]

christopher nolan made a trilogy of very good, very gritty, crime thrillers. the cinematography was polished, the scores dramatic and tense and engaging, the plots... fit enough for what they were...

... but they shouldn't have been batman films. :/

[capetowncapers]

Feeling actually nauseous seeing continued right wing fear mongering about trans people and realizing they intend to keep targeting them in any way they can. I hate it here I hate it I hate it I hate it. I fucking hate the United States it’s a hellscape.

[theflashjaygarrick]

Agreeing with all of this. Tbh the joke was more about how the characters are treated on a meta level then in-universe. So many articles about and summaries of booster gold’s character talk about his non-heroic or morally dubious origin and I was imagining what it would be like if the doctor got the same treatment.

In universe from a legal perspective both were treated a similar way. Death penalty for stealing the ship that gets mitigated to another punishment (exile vs imprisonment) because of their good deeds. Though yeah @gluecookie it always seemed funny to me they let him keep his broken TARDIS after all they did to punish him for having it in the first place.

When Doctor Who steals a time machine that belongs in a museum he's a 'beloved hero' and a 'role model for children' but when I, Booster Gold...

[d00rh4ndl3]

"I cant believe this character in this show is acting so unreasonable and not understanding other character, this is such bad writing"

So theres this thing called character conflict.

[five-one-two-station]

Now that a lot of the dumbass discourse cloud has died down - or maybe I've just blocked the right people - I just want to articulate a bugbear of mine about a lot of S2 Caitlyn takes more specifically:

Caitlyn does not lose sight of her protective impulses, or impulses towards fairness and justice, for Zaun, during her peak cape era. Nor does she, having taken her first hit this painful, simply disregard or forget her compassion for Zaunites. These traits are as strong or maybe stronger than they were in S1.

That's the whole point.

She still believes she is acting in everyone's best interest. She believes the end justifies these means for everyone. She believes doing this is better for Zaun and Piltover.

This is a really important distinction. She isn't lashing out in a Hulk Rage at Jinx's hometown; she is doing this stuff because she thinks these means are justified by the ends. For everyone.

The reason the difference matters is because this is a really confrontational and difficult thing to grapple with as a viewer, but it's an important thing exactly for that reason.

Caitlyn is complicit in bad things that hurt people because she believes they're for their own good.

This is a completely human, relatable thing to do - but it makes people really uncomfortable to see it play out, to the point they're not even quite able to look it in the eye.

They want her to be a pettily angry Disney villain because it is simple and clean. We all understand what it's like to lash out in anger, and would recognize it in ourselves again, even if we did it anyway. We can recognize the impulse to be cruel or vengeful for the sake of it whether we are inclined to indulge it or not.

And we can choose not to quite easily - it is after all one of the most important lessons we spend our childhoods learning.

But it is a far more unsettling thing to be told "You can do something terrible even though it feels right, you can do something terrible even though you mean well" - because the natural implication of that is "...You could even be doing it right now".

That doesn't absolve her. There were ways for her to know better than this. She doesn't have any good choices when it comes to the Strike Team stuff, sure - but she does have choices after that point, when the trolley tracks aren't so few, and that's where she falls down.

Her failure then is in not thinking to continuously evaluate her decisions in their own terms, as she goes. In not continuously confronting herself with each individual step and its necessity; in letting herself be led out to sea just because her feet were already wet.

And it is in not being ready to see and hear somebody who can see her trajectory much more clearly from their vantage point than she can from hers.

What she did wrong wasn't losing sight of Zaun's own humanity or simply disregarding it, nothing as easy as that; it was losing sight of the fact she doesn't always have the tools to recognize what actually Serves and Protects that very thing, now, this time, today.

This is a far more valuable story, imho, than the "Oh she stubbed her toe and turned mean :( ".

What are you doing right now just because it was right last time? Because it feels right? Because you're sure it's for their own good?

Are you sure there isn't a way to know better...?

Are you trying to find out?

[epic-curious]

The thing to understand about Amy Dallon is that she's an incel. You'll make so many mistakes in trying to understand her character unless you start from this lens.

She has:

An abusive home life which encouraged emotional repression and resentment

An inability to change for the better, despite being socially and economically suited to do so (by virtue of being a parahuman)

Most importantly, a strong belief in the just-world hypthesis; in her mind, bad things only happen to unjust being, good things happen to good people, and doing good things regardless of intent/sincerity entitles you to a reward

These are all traits she has common with incels based on how they describe themselves and what they believe. There's this belief in the fandom that her sexually violent behavior came out of nowhere, but I posit that these character flaws, combined with Amy's knowledge that Victoria would never willingly reciprocate her feelings, provide the perfect setup for her to do what she did.

I don't think was an accidental writing decision either, like Taylor's attraction towards women. It really feels like Wildbow purposefully wrote Amy's downfall to parallel stories about "nice guys" who fly into meltdowns or become crazed stalkers after finding out that no, basic decency doesn't entitle the object of your affections to fuck you. Men who, despite real challenges, have the resources to become well-adjusted but refuse because they completely lack an internal locus of control. Just like them, Amy had resources outside of her abusive family in the form of the PRT, who despite their own issues would have moved heaven and Earth to make sure they didn't lose a valuable cape like her. Instead, she continued to hide her deteriorating mental health and continued to harbor feelings she knew wouldn't be reciprocated until she finally messed up like she'd always been meaning to:

"Do you know how many hours I’ve spent awake at night, wishing my powers would just go away, or that some circumstance would come up where I’d make some excusable mistake where they would eventually forgive me, but where I couldn’t visit the hospitals anymore?”

Another commonality with incels and "nice guys"; not wanting to actually get better, but waiting for a reason to let their worst impulses loose.

I also think this was the reason Amy's character drive Wildbow so crazy. Imagine, you write a character whose mental illness and entitlement cause her to rape and mutilate her sister, who has clear parallels to an incel's violent reaction to being rejected. The response by a not insignificant part of the fandom is accusations of bigotry, because they have invented a version of your character in their heads that has all of her identity markers but none of the characterization you wrote. Coincidentally, most of this part of the fandom hasn't read your work to completion, if at all. Some of them even blame the sister for being raped! This isn't helped by the fact that you are a bit homophobic, that you wrote your protagonist to be bisexual but didn't realize it, that you described the sexuality of one of your bisexual characters as "hedonist", that you inexplicably wrote a character who canonically looks butch, is obsessed with your female protagonist, but is somehow straight. Maybe you could have done some of that better, but the fact that your biggest detractors are fans of your incel rapist is confounding to say the least. Combine all this with the inkling suspicion that this discourse wouldn't exist if you had written Amy as a man...yeah, I kinda get why Wildbow went insane about her.

Now, I'm not writing this as some sort of callout for a fictional character. I love evil women and seeing Amy actually lean in to being an incel crashout would have been fun as hell. But I really hate this idea that Amy was a poor little meow meow whose character was assassinated by the author. The pieces are all there, you just understand this character less than Wildbow which is really saying something.

[ixxivvv]

small in your coat.

zayne, sylus, caleb.

(written by me in 15+hr makeup and contacts crouching on the station floor as i wait for the last train after a shitty night club shift, yearning for a dream to make me feel protected, in their coat.)

-⛄️ zayne ❄️-

made from well tailored houses, all his jackets had structure to them. shoulders wide and thick fabrics.

"Heading home." he sent to you, in mind you are waiting in his home. your night together, sleeping in his place for tonight for no particular reason was going to begin after a while of being busy with each others work: and you couldn't wait.

you explore his apartment in curiosity, a place you are familiar with now. his room still felt like you were entering his world. no dust, everything was in order and tidy. it still felt so wide and neat, in contrast to your casual attire now.

you opened his cabinets and drawers, observing the entire thing. you find bits and pieces of your favorite memories together- the shirt he wore to your first date together, the sweater you gifted him, and all of his coats on the hanger. reaching for one, the classic burberry trench coat and resting it on your shoulders. it just felt like a back hug- he may be cold but only you know how warm and kind he was. it nest heavy on you, nearly dragging the ends to the floor, the sleeves too long too. in his pocket, something crinkles- a piece of bonbon chocolate and a candy. it made you smile, as you look into the mirror.

as you felt him, the entrance door opens. "darling? im home..." you scurry over, "forgetting" to take your new cape on. "welcome home! :)"

he expresses that micro expression he often does- his pupils widening and looking to the side, almost processing his next move. but this time, he couldn't find words. was it too much? you tilt your head, peeping into him. ".. zayne?"

he managed to look at you, then suddenly grips your shoulders tight. he gasps and flushes,

"... did you miss me that much?"

- 🐦‍⬛sylus 🚗-

his biker jacket, thick leather with a thrashing pattern in his signature colors. the one you hold on tight to from his back when you two are on a joyride. in fancy outings with a dress he order made, he subtly pushes you forward: to show his beautiful girl, to lead the way and only when you seem lost he stands by your side.

he rarely showed his back, which is why you enjoyed joyrides. sylus hasn't taken you out for a dinner or party or anything for a while due to discourse and in fighting between groups. arrests, leadership changes, moving positions and disagreements. it was hectic and n109 zone was not safe now- less people in the streets. he kept you inside which is fine, but even without luke and kieran in the home, only mephisto kept you company for now.

eye rolling media coverage that would never have enough air time of what truely happened, social media discourse of what happened...

"mephisto-h... where is sylus?" and the high tech shows a display of his current location. still out there in some meeting with some people you wouldn't want to know. its all so hectic just looking at it. the cons of being a "mafia boss boyfriend's girlfriend" trope is going to your day job and watching people at work come and go, no idea of anything and the kind of people youve come to known and their struggles. its all just outsiders. you loved sylus, you really did, and more than the thrilling adrenaline. a kind of world which youve come to know that he is there in because he can't live anywhere else. the kind of loneliness and disconnect from people that "don't watch the news" or it's "too dark".

your heavy legs dragged you into his closet. opening the doors, it smelled of his cologne and dry cleaners. but you reached out for the only jacket that dosen't particularly smell of anything- his biker jacket. its made with protective plates and leather. it faintly smelled of his cologne and petrol. maybe you did miss the thrill of when you first got together. or the wind.

"kitten?" sylus walks in, surprising you.

"sylus? you were home?" "why, unhappy to see me? well, i can clearly see you wanted to see me." he chuckles and looks into you lovingly, like a kitten caught in a ball of yarn. caught redhanded, so small in his jacket all curled up like a blanket. he lifts you up, bridal style- so adorable, pretending to not miss him with your words but so clearly did.

sylus decided in that moment, that the discourse needs to end- to bring a sense of "peace" back.

- ✈️ caleb 🍎-

(soo theres a canon audio that you steal his jacket aand... well this will be based off that 😭)

caleb called you to eat dinner from downstairs- "y/n! dinners ready~!" he said so happily, he enjoyed cooking but he loves "playing" house with you.

but you weren't coming down, so he placed the pan in the middle of the table and headed upstairs? where were you now? werent you just taking a shower? still in the shower prohaps? however his instincts, senses you were in his room. his big footsteps, open to a sight he didn't expect.

you were already changed with no makeup, but you had your hands behind your back, staring into his closet like an art piece.

"did you, find my clothes interesting?" you took back by surprise, eyes widening. he informs you that dinners ready and guides you downstairs around your shoulder. you seemed to be in thought still, "i wonder whats in her head again." caleb ponders.

as you sit across him from the dinner table, chewing - still in thought. he couldn't leave it.

"pipsqueak, whats on your mind?" ".. nothing. pass the soy sauce?" his eyes lose its spark.

as he showered that night, washing his hair down in his own thoughts. he could feel himself getting anxious, triggering his own core and attempting to coax himself out of it. hes practicing not to doubt you so much.

he sighs as he steps out the shower in a single towel wrapped around his waist, just to see you sitting in the corner of his bed again, dangling your legs. you just stared into him, only with one thing. his colonel jacket hauled on your tiny shoulders. you were sitting on the long tail of the trench, the back stitching that resembles mechanical wings rests on your back. your soft features contrasted with the black color that faintly smelled of iron.

"...", he had no words, whether in disbelief or just how small you were in his build. if you stood up, the coat might drag across the floor. you fury your brows, sensing that he didn't enjoy the gesture. it was childish, but the details on his coat was impressive- no fraying or loose thread, some signs of wear. it sat heavy on you, emotionally and physically.

but caleb also adored it- his brute power and fear in the jacket suddenly seemed softer in your touch. how he'd just let you.

".. you like the colonel that much? or the owner of this uniform?" you touch the gold stitching, teasing him a bit more.

".. then, i must bow down to the colonel." he gets on his knee, softly taking your foot. he was still in his towel, but you knew what was going to happen-

and you loved it. crossing your arms, roleplaying your power. caleb smirks and places a kiss on your ankle.

".. you have the full authority to command me. i shall serve you, my entire body.." as he kisses up your foot and thigh- only you can do this to the actual colonel himself.

[kaliido-s]

SPOILERS FOR PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS BELOW CUT

Because I need to yap about that ending 😁

so. holy fucking shit. I need to preface by saying that I am a newcomer to this series and I’m not sure how many people will share my perspective, but I need to get this out anyway. The reason I love the Yautja is mostly for their personality. The first time I watched Predator I saw the Jungle Hunter as, while having a degree of respect for tradition and his prey, was also a bit of a cocky asshole who saw himself as a tier above the rest, and he had the might to back it up! That kind of character immediately drew me in, and I saw similar traits of that cocky attitude appear when I started watching more movies. To me, the Yautja have their customs and cultural norms to abide by, but many of them do not shy away from skirting around those rules whenever they can. Some of them will do anything for the love of the game and to chase the thrill of blood and gore.

AND THAT FUCKING WARLORD PREDATOR. HE EMBODIES THAT COMPLETELY AND I AM OVER THE MOON ABOUT IT.

I was GEEKING when I saw this man. HE FUCKING TALKS???? HE TALKS??? OH MY GOD OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS OOOHHHHFGGSHAGSGHGH

he came out here with this deep ass voice speaking fucking YAUTJA LANGUAGE (which sounds so amazing and I am SO EXCITED to hear more of the conlang in Badlands), wearing a YAUTJA SKULL AS HIS MASK, and tells the characters to fight to the death so one of them can fight him and OBVIOUSLY die as well. DUDE. THE FUCKING AURA ON DISPLAY. IM GEEKING IM GEEKING IM GEEKING. The way he fondled the spines on his cape??? His chuckling??? HIS VOICE???? IM FUCKGJHNAGAGGDBBFJNSBSUBHIBJNJOR

This man is a serial aurafarmer and he NEVER LOST AURA ONCE. When Ursa and Kenji were kicking his ass he took that shit in strides, when they got away, he didn’t cry about it and throw a fit because then he would lose aura. He turned around to his clan, gestured to the ship and said, “Let’s go hunting!” THATS THE MOST YAUTJA FUCKING THING EVER BRO AAUGGGHHHAGSG I LOVE THESE BASTARD ALIEN JOCKS IM TWEAKING THEY MAKE ME SO HAPPY

and to calm down for a second, I’ve seen some discourse about this ending, and honestly I understand where people are coming from. While it’s frustrating that the movie doesn’t say it outright (which, they hardly ever do and thats doubly annoying), I think that this clan is definitely something like a group of Bad Bloods and does not represent the whole of Yautja. They might even be the clan that Feral Predator was from, given all the bone decor, but I don’t want to get too crazy. In any case, while these guys are very dishonourable assholes, the Yautja are not a monolith and Dan definitely does not treat them as such, especially given the variety of Predators he’s created. Dek is going to be our next protagonist and needs to be a sympathetic character, and it would be difficult to keep him that way if he comes from a society of people who will literally never let someone who fairly beats a predator get away. I have faith in Dan and his team, but I get if people were rubbed the wrong way by this ending. I kind of am too in a few ways, cough Naru cough, but I’m kind of way too autistic about these aliens and this fucking warlord bitch to be that bothered by it 😭 I really really liked it and my Predator and Deltarune brainrot are going to be fighting each other once I finally get my hands on that game. If anyone actually read this whole yap I appreciate you.

[transmutationisms]

Forgive me if this is a silly question + no pressure to answer it ofc, but what would you 'replace' addiction with when discussing patterns of harmful and compulsive substance use? I agree with your views re: the disease model and its failure to engage with the material contexts in which these behaviours often arise, but I also find addiction a useful concept for talking about my own experiences with substance use (including severe physical dependency). It's a nebulous, imperfect term, but when someone calls themselves a [substance] addict you implicitly understand something of their relationship with that substance. For some the relationship is mutable, whereas for others it's a pattern that repeats throughout their lives; both can claim to have experienced addiction, as far as I'm concerned. But there are certain behaviours and attitudes that are very common amongst self-described addicts, and these commonalities form the basis of many peer support networks. Without the conceptual framework of addiction, would we not be even further isolated?

first of all i disagree that addiction is even a useful shorthand, and i think you actually contradict this notion yourself in this ask. if someone tells me they're an addict, do they mean they're a 12-stepper who views substances as external impositions onto the psyche curable by prayer to protestant god? do they mean they're physically dependent on a substance? that they have been in the past? that they subjectively feel out of control of their substance use? that it's escalating, or has been in the past? that it has cost them jobs or friendships? that it is subjectively enjoyable but exacts health effects they dislike? that they prioritise it over other elements of their life? that they use it as a form of escapism, as a form of self punishment, for some kind of spiritual enlightenment, as pain relief, as a distraction...?

if i care about the answers to these questions then the label addiction means nothing to me. i find out these answers by talking to people and the explanations are simply not summed up by that one word. i have met self-identified addicts with definitions of the term beyond my wildest conceptions & i'm sure i will continue to do so. "it's shorthand" is not factually workable if no one can even define what precisely is ostensibly being shorthanded. so on a basic level, no i actually do not think anything is being semantically sacrificed in challenging the idea of 'addiction' because it's a political dragnet, not a coherent psychological or experiential concept.

second, in a hypothetical world where the behaviour of using substances recreationally isn't pathologised, i don't really care that strongly what people do or don't call it. but i don't live in that world, i live in the one where the idea of 'addiction' is a clinical discourse born of a degeneracy theory discourse intended to produce economically useful citizens by pathologising inebriation. so i not only don't see the value in caping for the term, i actually think continuing to rely on these discourses is actively harmful. incidentally, and not to elevate my personal experience here, but some of the most heinous shit people have ever said to me wrt my own substance use has come from self-identified addicts too. because again, this term is not rooted in some kind of care model but in a political discourse intended to eliminate the behaviours it describes.

this to say: i'm not proposing an alternate name for addiction because i don't think it's actually a useful or liberating term, let alone a coherent description of any one psychological or personal experience. there are specific terms i sometimes use as far as they go: i might talk about physical dependency where applicable, or about feeling compelled to use substances (though i am becoming increasingly disillusioned with notions of 'compulsion' for basically the same reason, i use that term only as a purely subjective description, and frankly i may move off recourse to it at all).

but i don't see that the umbrella term 'addiction' is actually unified by anything except a political logic of attempted discipline & control. if i want to talk to people personally about our experiences using drugs then i already have quite a bit of vocabulary beyond the addiction term that i need & like to use for myself, & i solicit the same from the people i talk to wrt their own experiences & interpretive frameworks. i don't think using the addiction framework is good or even neutral in a politico-moral sense, and its conceptual heterogeneity means it's not even useful philosophically. what it does, and what it exists to do, is obscure the individual into a pathologising discourse intended to correct and punish a deviant behaviour.

[blitzs-largest-horsiest-dildo]

MASTERMIND SPOILER WARNING.

Edit: Also, sorry for the terrible quality screen grabs, lol

I've seen a lot of amazing discourse on Mastermind, and wanted to add my own. The scene that really wrenches my heart is Blitzø fighting to get to Stolas. Trying to keep him from doing the exact same self sacrificing shit he's about to do

Here, he's literally pulling against golden chains, a metaphor we've seen before. The chains usually lead to Stolas, but now they're keeping him away from the birb. I feel like the chains are a sort of metaphor for the societal pressures surrounding their relationship. Instead of feeling like Stolas has all the power (holding the chains), Blitzø's perspective has changed, and he can see past the class difference. He can see that these pressures cause Stolas just as much harm by keeping him isolated from the love and help that found family provides.

Then the absolute instant he can, our lizard man is rushing to his birb. We can see the desperation, but most importantly, he's still unable to actually touch Stolas. Clinging to his cape (another symbol of his class/status), Blitzø literally begs Stolas not to do this, essentially to let class and systemic oppression win just this once. He loves Stolas so much that he is willing to let go of his most basic principles (stick it to the upper class/change things for the lower class) just to save him.

And when that doesn't work, he just goes feral, screaming for Stolas and fighting with every fiber of his being just to get back to the love of his life. Blitzø's desire to get back to Stolas is so powerful that hyper strong cop/security demons can barely drag him out of the courtroom. It's a completely unmasked, painfully genuine reaction.

I'm not sure what my point is other than the two idiots love eachother so damn much, and holy shit that scene wrecked me emotionally. Good Job, Spindle Horse.💖

[absolutebl]

Tag Game: 10 Scenes I will never forget (BL from China, Japan, Korea & Taiwan)

Tagged by @hughungrybear

Rules: Share five (5) ten (10) scenes you can't forget. Not your favorites, the ones that got stuck in your brain for any reason.

I took that "not your favorite" line seriously.

1. Sleeves in Gay (Chinese Bromance)

Untamed was the first instance I remember but I have a screen shot from Word of Honor. Look we all get it, China. But the DISCOURSE we had over this whole thing around China, BL, and sleeves kinda cemented my relationship with BL on tumblr.

I guess you had to be here. But A TIME was had on this hellsite and we have all been Paying Attention to sleeves ever since.

As we very well should.

2. Opening meet cute Seven Days

THE STAGING. My first incidenct of a BL outright DOING manga RIGHT just on our screens for us. The perspective, the framing, the body positions... everything was perfection.

3. Into the trash bag Kieta Hatsukoi

It broke us. Every one.

4. Blueming's how to film a gay sex scene in Korea... an education

I don't like that they felt they had to do it this way, but I like that the strictures and confines pulled out a kind of shadow puppet art and the coloring was remarkable. Speaking of...

5. Color Rush's musical montage date

I liked the sound track for this show (rare for me) and I loved the atmospheric underwater feeling of this sequence plus the musical score.

There are others from this show like the rain hung, the crystal rainbow, and the rainbow fan of color wheel, but I had to pick.

6 The double down "crash into to me" trope used to emphasize the love triangle in Light On Me

Korea is just so CLEVER with their trope deployment. Watching them juggle multiple back-and-forths damn near perfectly to emphasize the love triangle and manipulate our emotions was brilliant. I still don't love a love triangle, but I appreciate the art of this one so much I gave it a 10/10.

7 "Have you been well, without me?" Our Dating Sim

Possibly one of the greatest lines ever delivered in a reunion romance.

8 Air gun to the heart in We Best Love

I could pick so many from this show but many of them would qualify as favorites. But this moment and the way you can see the invisible shot hit, because, well, Sam is just that good. It's just perfect tsundere meets pining seme acting.

9 Kiss through the net (ICONIC) in HIStory 2 Crossing the Line

Just amazing, perfect, beautifully shot, sports romance at its finest.

10 These goobers in Love is Science

Tiny family for the win.

Others I seriously considered but eliminated because they ARE favorites

Takara falling into the wall

My Personal Weatherman drunk boyfriend lap cuddles

Just Friends kissing in public in uniform

The ending running confession sequence in My Beautiful Man (I will never forget it because this one broke me, in real time)

Love Class 2 the boxers sequence

Jun & Jun the little whimper before he gives up and the kiss, also squishy cheeks

Love for Love's Sake gay punching, also "who hit you," also the magic kiss, also....

Light on Me - the confession, the hand hold at school, Namgong in the cape with flowers

The blood covered kiss in Long Time No See

Our Dating Sim's stealth kiss giggle

Cats/dogs, dark meat/light meat chicken, bisexual awakening in Oh My Assistant.

"To soft" in History 3 Trapped

Peaking over the divider in Semantic Error, also seme subscription service, ending fairy, yaja time, the LETTUCE line, also...

The backpack drop in Why R U? Korea.

The nod to the bed in See Your Love

Ghat kisses!

Dishonorable mention for the dirty minds in the corner

Minato's Laundromat - the sheet scene

My Personal Weatherman - the shirt scene (similarly My Day and the belt)

Old Fashion Cupcake - the finger bite

First Love Story - Pervert

Jun & Jun - THAT lap sit

The lap site tie grab in Kiseki Dear to Me

Love is Science in the closet makeout scene

This line in Unknown:

Should I do a whole second one for Thailand?

I don't tag but if you want to play you absolutely should!

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Terrible Visions

A scrambled timeline is a timeline that has proceeded much like ours, except that some particular facet has been mixed up all over the place. For example, in the scrambled timeline we will consider today, our world's fictional stories have been told by different people, and in different ways.

Bryan Lee O'Malley, in this alternate timeline, is best known as the cartoonist responsible for Homestuck, a popular comic series about a group of children who become embroiled in a cosmic-scale video game known as Sburb. Although Homestuck is probably most often associated with the cult classic Edgar Wright-directed film adaptation released in 2016, the comics themselves are highly-regarded, and the film brought a new audience to them. Netflix has commissioned an animated continuation, The Homestuck Epilogues, which is due to be released soon.

Andrew Hussie, on the other hand, is a figure you're likelier to know if you're overly online. His "MS Paint Adventures" series - most notably including Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, which is kind of like Homestuck but weirder and hornier - have firmly remained a fixture of obsessive Twitter fandom culture. It doesn't help that the best-known iteration, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, is infamous for stretching thousands of pages of meandering digressions out of a simple and focused narrative starting point. Scott Pilgrim fans have developed something of a toxic reputation, which is not entirely deserved - although of course Knives discourse is interminable, and back in the fandom's heyday there were reportedly incidents of fans assaulting each other "for being evil exes".

Scott Pilgrim fandom was very big back in the day, though, and consequently it was a nexus for other creative figures who would go on to surpass Hussie. Perhaps foremost among these is indie developer Toby Fox. He was literally living in Hussie's basement when he produced ROSEQUARTZ, a universally-beloved retro Goonies-like RPG about a human hybrid boy born to a race of gem-based aliens. He's now developing an episodic spiritual successor, RAZORQUEST, with more overtly dark themes. It revolves around an inheritance dispute among a demon-summoning family.

Other foundational figures in this timeline's internet culture include Alison Bechdel, who helped get the webcomic scene started. Although she's now more seriously acclaimed for her personal memoirs, her gaming webcomic Press Start To Dyke, which premiered in 1998, was once everywhere. It had a broad appeal, and at its height, it was common to see even straight guys sharing pages from it. Time has not been especially kind to it, though, and at this point its main legacy is test.png, a meme spawned by one of the comic's most ill-advised pages.

Then there's John C. McCrae, more often known by his pseudonym Wildbow. A prolific and reclusive author of doorstopping "web serials" - long-form fiction published online - McCrae's best-known serial is still his first, Wind, a noir superhero story set in an alternate history where capes are mostly just a subculture of unpowered vigilantes. Wind landed in a culture already rife with comic book deconstructions, like Alan Moore's 2002 graphic novel Worm Turns, but it nonetheless managed to stand out from the pack with its extensive cast of characters and its themes of coordination problems and the end of the world. Later McCrae web serials include Part (the first "Otherverse" serial; an urban fantasy story about a couple who die in a car accident and find that they have become ghosts), Tear (a "biopunk" story set in a collapsing underwater city), Warn (the controversial Wind sequel), and Play (the second "Otherverse" serial, set in a small Indiana town that helps hide a psychic girl from the CIA).

Last and perhaps least, we should discuss J. K. Rowling. Far and away the most famous of any of these authors, Rowling's name is inseparable from the YA series that she debuted with, the Luz Noceda books, which remain her one successful work. Although it was heavily derivative of older fantasy novels - like Jill Murphy's Academy For Little Witches, or Philip Pullman's Methods Of Rationality trilogy - Luz Noceda was still a monumental and unprecedented success in the publishing industry, and the film adaptations were consistent blockbusters. The final book, Luz Noceda and the Watcher of Rain, contained some allusions to a romantic relationship between Luz and her recently-redeemed associate Amity. Rowling confirmed that this was her intent in subsequent interviews and indicated that she had fought her publishers for it; the film would then go on to escalate matters slightly further.

There have been many lengthy and heated online arguments as to whether the references in the book itself constitute text or mere subtext. Whatever your stance on this discourse, a new complication has been introduced recently: although she has put out no official statement on the matter as of yet, it has become quite apparent from Rowling's shrinking network of contacts and her conspicuous silences that she is certainly TERF-sympathetic, and likely an outright TERF herself. For many, this is leading to a critical reevaluation of the social values inherent in the Luz Noceda series; others, to say the least, are holding off on that kind of reappraisal.

Anyway, Scott Pilgrim just beat Luz Noceda in a Twitter poll for Most Gay Media, and people are piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissed

[moadeep]

I understand reboot fatigue, but that series has always had a lot of themes about hope and redemption for me and many others (not delving into Susan discourse). I think now is a very good time for this particular series to be adapted again. The world is fucking going through it, *that* is undeniable. All "my childhood" rhetoric aside, why wouldn't you want a bit of brightness in a very stressful world?

Side note: the only place for "faithfulness" in adaptations is *maybe* mini-series. But even then, there's some picking and choosing that has to happen. Most people I know find the 1980 P&P a yawnfest, but it's probably the most faithful adaptation I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. Most nitpickers don't actually want a faithful adaptation, they just want one that matches what's in THEIR head.

I can’t do this anymore

[artbyblastweave]

I think I’ve come to a revelation when it comes to cauldron discourse.

The people saying cauldron deserves some w’s for some of their plots are consequentialists. The consequences of cauldrons actions saved the world.

The people pointing out cauldron deserves none of that because, by utilitarian calculation, it’s sheer accident some chick glitched herself into a position to traumatize god into suicide.

And then they point out that the parts of the equation they can be credited with (preserving capes, slightly less crapsack world) are tasks they auto succeeded because one of them had a fragment of divinity shoved in their head.

I think it’s pretty hard to argue consequentialist ethics for a story, because the consequences are rigged. If cauldron failed there wouldn’t be a story, so “but it worked out!” Is kind of a poisoned well for justification and moral reasoning.

I would only seriously contest your last point- part of the point of interlude 29 is that if Cauldron failed there would have been a story, and from the glimpses we get, potentially a very interesting one! There's no guarantee that, for example, nobody in the alternate timeline wouldn't have lucked into a way to break Eden and Scion's long con, maybe via Abbadon's meddling, which is the intuitive story arc from the premise as presented. (Much lower likelyhood of that given the central conceit, but still.) One thing I like about the ending of Worm is how in a lot of ways it's playing with the uncertainty surrounding whether any given thing that was done was the only thing that could have been done- you just can't know! You'd "do things differently," but who knows what that would actually entail?