#Choices Rambles

[hystericalqween]

Replaying the Choices books that I previously read with no diamonds and after finishing The Sophomore I'm taking a break and decided to replay Desire & Decorum...

Ugh I've missed this ugly gremlin man so much

[smallblueandloud]

*for the purposes of this poll, "ears pierced" refers to a "standard" lobe piercing, in the middle of the lobe

i'm asking b/c everyone i grew up with who was AFAB got their ears pierced at birth, but i know it's not universal!

[lazylittledragon]

is it even game changer if nobody is threatening to ruin someone else's career by the end of the episode

[crismakesstuff]

cast out of paradise

[bitegore]

Zionists want you to conflate Judaism and Zionism. Zionists want you to believe that Judaism cannot exist without Zionism and that all Jews are Zionists. Zionism would have Jews believe that a Jewish state is the only way that they can be safe from antisemitism and will point to any instance of antisemitism as proof that Zionism is the solution- so Zionism wants gentiles to be antisemitic in their support of Palestine. They want you to conflate all Jews with Zionism and the state of Israel, and they want you to treat all Jews regardless of political affiliation as the face of Israel. Antizionist Jews exist, and incidences of antisemitism ostensibly acting against Zionism will not help dismantle the forces propping Zionism up.

Don't do their work for them.

[thefairmaidenoffandom]

so, for all the firefighter!yuuji aus that i adore, i never see any ems!megumi, which feels like a crime

[infamous-if]

the hardest part of the rewrite is adding more mean choices/dialogue 😭 it's easy to write it toward seven and blake but the option to be mean to characters who are nice to you is so difficult lolool

[sophsicle]

in the last few days i have had comments on choices complaining about smoking and underage drinking like. let me write about my vices in PEACE. yes i am trying to corrupt the youth actually. i think u should all be drinking and smoking 24/7. brush your teeth with a bottle of jack as the great philosopher kesha once said.

[swordmaid]

brienne but she's wearing 1949 cocteau's beauty and the beast inspired fit!!! this is the inspo pic i used if ur curious.

gonna be posting more of this redesign thing (and also jaime's ver) some time in the future but i just wanted to share this one <3

[a2zillustration]

gently places the Gale and Croissant dolls in a little box and VIOLENTLY SHAKES IT

Also here's what Karlach was right about if you forgot.

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[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

[romeavethinker]

sooooo funny how laurance is a traumatized undead servant of hell (or hell homologue) and also a little bit of a slut and garroth is a stoic guard who ran away from his corrupt family to a small village that he devotes himself wholeheartedly to protecting and yet between the two of them laurance is the one who's like "i can fix him"

[chronicowboy]

why did eddie have to deliver the "we don't need a key, we're firefighters" line so goddamn sensually. i mean we all know why. but like why.

[lazylittledragon]

detransition is something that should Absolutely be talked about but the idea of going into this tag terrifies me beyond belief

[sol-insidious]

Bringing my two cents to the (in)famous Luke "Chanel Boots" Skywalker joke because I actually have weird thoughts about Luke and fashion tropes that go beyond haha gay blonde twink like luxury brand.

Thinking about Luke's characterization and fashion as a narrative device. The significance of Luke leaving Tatooine with literally nothing but the clothes on his back and donning Corellian Bloodstripes at the end of A New Hope.

Thinking about Luke's wardrobe gradually transitioning from lighter colors to black throughout Episodes IV-VI.

Thinking about the sheer intentionality of Luke having an all-black wardrobe in Return of The Jedi onwards. Is it to honor his father? To mourn him? To remind himself of who he could be and who he already is? All of the above? Thinking about the deliberate asymmetry of Luke's single black glove. Thinking about the white flap on his chest.

Thinking about Padmé and how she was molded into fashion since birth, the extravagance of her outfits and makeup as an Amidala. Thinking about how Luke seems to mirror her regal anonymity with his cloaked grim reaper fit. Thinking about Luke's disconnected relationship with his late mother and wondering if he ever felt the same level of restrictive empowerment she did when she wore her gowns.

Thinking about the nuances of queer fashion and how it can equally be as empowering and restrictive to the wearer.

Thinking about the white and orange prison uniforms in Andor and the colors of the Rebel Alliance.

Thinking about my old Modernist Literature professor who wrote her thesis on the colors of stockings in D.H. Lawrence's fiction and how women characters chose to wear bright stockings under their long, billowing skirts that no-one else but themselves could see. Thinking about the color pink in Legally Blonde. Thinking about reading dress and fashion as a legitimate pathway to literary analysis. Thinking about the utter significance of Luke's entire outfit. All of his outfits.

Thinking about those damn Chanel Boots.

[soleminisanction]

I've always really liked DC's in-house choice of referring to their various superhero groupings as "families," but it has gotten a little frustrating recently with people both in canon and in fandom seeming to forget that families aren't just a parental-unit-and-kids formation. They're complicated, and a lot of the DC families are too messy to fit into that neat little nuclear family mode.

Which is to say... here's some scattered thoughts/summaries about how these families are actually structured in canon, because I think it's interesting:

Supers -- The smaller, more traditional Superfamily (Clark, Lois, Kara, Kon, etc.) is a pretty traditional Midwestern nuclear family, with Jimmy Olsen filling the role of close family friend/goofy neighbor sidekick (in the Silver Age, he was Kara's would-be suitor) and Steel feeling more like part of Clark's personal circle of friends. The recent line up, though, with Jon, the twins, Kong and Nat? Starts to feel more like some old dynasty or noble house, complete with fostered foundlings and the Steels acting almost like knights under a noble's banner, possibly reflective of what the House of El would have been on Krypton.

Arrows -- Might currently be the closet to a traditional nuclear family structure. You've got Ollie and Dinah, their younger sisters, Ollie's adopted and biological children, and Ollie's granddaughter through Roy, plus by some counts Roy's co-parent and her sister as "in-laws." Bonnie and Cissie King-Jones are adjacent to but not technically "part" of the family, though I believe it's implied at one point that Ollie might also be Cissie's bio-dad. Pretty straightforward, these guys are actually family and they act like it, for good and ill.

Shazam Family -- Also a literal, actual family. Not originally, the original golden age "Marvel Family" was considerably more complicated and only Billy and Mary were full siblings, but nowadays the whole point of the modern Shazam family is that they're foster siblings united by familial love and that's fantastic. Meanwhile your average Black Adam story is 75% angsty family drama, 25% Egyptian mythology references.

Flashes -- Technically closer to three nuclear families (the Allens, the Wests and the Garricks; four if you include the Quicks), two of whom are united by marriage and all of whom are bound by the Speedforce, which, given its semi-spiritual connections to things like Speedster afterlives, can act almost like a religious force that connects them to the additional members like Avery, Circuit Breaker and Max as Bart's foster-dad. They're a big, sprawling tree with more cousins than siblings, the kind of family that functionally has a reunion every Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Lanterns -- Now these guys are the exception that proves my point about the whole 'family' thing not being straightforward. The lanterns aren't a family, they're a corps. Soldiers. Space cops. Comrades-in-arms. They respect each other, have each other's backs, might even like or care about each other, but those last two are optional, and they don't have the same kind of assumed obligations towards each other that a family would have. They're friends and co-workers, not family, but that doesn't mean their relationships are less significant, they're just different.

Wonders -- Roughly half of them are either one of Hippolyta's daughters (Diana, Donna, Nubia pre-Crisis) or related to them through the gods (Cassie), and the other half (Artemis, Yara, modern-age Nubia) use sister as a term of endearment more in a utopian lesbian commune kind of way. I think they brought Steve Trevor back recently? He's basically the Ken in this equation and perfectly fine with that role. None of which should be surprising if you've seen Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

Bats -- This is the one that people get really wrong when they try to force it into a traditional family structure. Don't let WFA fool you, the Bats are and have always been way more a snarled mess of tangled interpersonal relationships than they've ever been a cohesive family. Whether Dick is Bruce's son or his brother depends on what era you're talking about, and the former reading is much more recent than you think -- as in "started cropping up in the early 2000s" recent. Barbara is both Cassandra's sister and her mother. Duke and Steph both have living parents and neither of them want or would ever dream of treating Bruce like their dad; Tim was the same way until his dad died. None of the Robins ever lived in the mansion together, nor did Cass. Babs considered Jean-Paul Valley her brother and Huntress is so close to Tim she once hallucinated him calling her Big Sister. They're a beautiful mess of people finding places where their broken edges fit together into something that works for them and trying to reduce it down to a cozy nuclear family is just so goddamn reductive and lazy.

Blue Beetles -- Are only tangentially related to each other. Seriously, they never even get direct mentoring, each one just takes over when the previous one dies and works on completely different rules from the other two. They're complete strangers bound by a legacy and that's honestly pretty fun.

Zataras -- There's only three of them and they're literally a father, daughter and cousin.

Martians -- Not really a family because there's only the two of them, but an interesting case where the two survivors of what was functionally a war of mutually assured destruction came together in an attempt to find some peace in the aftermath of what they'd lost.

Titans -- The JLA and JSA aren't really in the "family" category, but the Titans lean into it hard, mostly because they're a textbook found family. They don't mirror a nuclear family structure, they're simply a group of people who came together to form a mutual support network. They're the idealized college friends you grew into your own with, some of them childhood companions and others you only met once you leave home for the first time, but all of them friends that you manage to maintain contact with for life, with everyone coming back together even as you scatter and do your own things.

Young Justice -- Meanwhile, this team is the chaotic group of misfits you hung out with when you were a teenager, especially when you were just starting to be allowed to act without adult supervision. You drive each other crazy, none of you know you're all queer as fuck, and you'd fight a bear for any of them even if they asked you not to. They'd probably be insulted if you tried to call them a family. They come out here to get away from their families, thank you very much.

[dragonologist-phd]

Man I miss the DAO specialization methods, I hope they bring back that type of thing in DA4. I wanna become a blood mage by making a deal with a demon. I wanna become a reaver by joining up with a dragon cult. I wanna become a duelist by meeting a pirate in a random brothel.

Even the less wild ones are really good! Getting close enough to your companions that they teach you their unique skills? I love it!

It’s just so much more interesting and engaging than doing random fetch quests or being purely mechanical