#I think they'll have interesting commentary

[zahri-melitor]

Rebirth is going okay but I’m pretty busy between uni and work right now so I’ve switched over to reading more Matt Wagner stuff and. uh. hmm.

The man is interested in the grotesque and the internal-external expression of horror. Which 100% translates to what he's worked on over the years: Batman stories about the Monster Men, about Two-Face, about Riddler. Sandman Mystery Theatre. The Demon. Madame Xanadu. Doctor Mid-Nite. House of Mystery.

(Honestly amazed he got to write a Trinity story, but the contents of that story now make more sense to me in context).

But reading it can be a bit, well, this comic story, Faces, was written in 1992, wasn’t it? (LOTDK #28-30).

It's not that it's badly told, but the themes of body horror surrounding Two-Face and that very late 80s/early 90s ugly art style aesthetic (the wider cartooning style one, not the Liefeld/Image one) are a lot to take in and it's somewhat callous in how it portrays the humanity of the Monster (TM).

I really, really disbelieve that, Wagner. My understanding is that they largely died out around the 1950s or so, and your story here is more reacting to the early 1990s revival scene and the discussion surrounding the future of circus at that time in terms of the decrease in animal acts, the increase in physical feats and the ethics of it all.

It's interesting. But the approach to the interrogation of the topic is going to catch modern readers off guard.

[pocket-pal-salt]

Actually it's a bit concerning I've seen multiple people who used to be active and imo important members of the community (people who had been there since the beginning) void their pals and plan to leave. it makes me wonder what's happening in the server, I'm not a booster or anyone important so I don't see behind the scenes but I'm starting to worry that maybe somethings wrong. (Don't post off anon)

ミ★

[dysthoepiadaily]

I saw this take the other day on twitter, and it made me kind of annoyed bc... way to miss the point, and to show that Dan was right and that it was too niche for you, LOL.

People do like Dan because of his authenticity and wit, but also... it's not that simple. Dystopia Daily, in many ways, was extremely authentic in the emotion it was trying to convey.

I think dystopia daily was more of a commentary on just youtuber culture in general, the desperate need for youtubers to remain popular at around a time when they were losing relevance. This led to a lot of them desperately collabing with one another, "exposing" more and more of their private lives in hopes that the more they give to the camera, to the audience, the audience won't abandon them (Dan and Phil finally tell the truth, Dan's grandma explains the internet).

There's a sort of "giving the people what they want" aspect to it, as well... "This kitten cured my depression", an obviously hyperbolic title, but something the audience wants from him... People want a STORY with youtubers, a sort of triumphant arc, but youtubers aren't actually able to deliver that triumphant arc in the way that the audience wants, because youtubers aren't fictional characters, they're real people.

There's just a brutality in the performer/audience relationship. If the audience doesn't get what they want, they'll just abandon the performer, and the industry is COMPETITIVE, and really unfair. Some of the shittest and laziest content will get a lot of views, while others don't get views when their content is actually interesting and creative! The "literally just reading reddit and monetizing it" and "if I laugh I instantly die" videos have a higher view count than like... "Dan and Dodie do a duet". This is literally modern art, and that's sooo good!!!

The overproduction of it all is by design... It's the point, in many ways, that this guy is being extremely overpaid for content that is objectively bad, but people fall for that kind of thing every time, LOL. It is inauthentic, but it's inauthentic because the personality of Daniel Howell, the host of Dystopia Daily is terrible for youtube views. He's just not the guy he used to be.

Was it the best execution of this concept? I don't know, and I don't really think so (but I am of the belief that art should be easy to understand and this is a VERY debatable point). But, I do think the concept is unique and interesting enough to warrant praise, plus, I think Dan is an ideal person to tell this story... I also think it's hilarious that people were confused about what the fuck it was.

[watatsumiis]

Being A Part of the Sumeru Squad!

I've been thinking a lot recently about being a part of the ‘in’ group in Sumeru - the ones shown to be good friends on screen already (Tighnari, Cyno, Al Haitham and Kaveh!) I feel like there's lots of ways one could slot themselves into the dynamic and it's just very pleasant and fun to think about. 

(Rambles below the cut. Platonic stuff, reader is referred to as ‘you’ and is entirely gender neutral) 

Though the squad is almost constantly making playful little jabs at one another, bickering back and forth and whatnot, they're overall a pretty supportive and kind group and accept you into their midst without too much fuss. 

You soon find yourself invited to a myriad of small, casual get-togethers where the group catches up with one another. It's kind of weirdly formal at first, with so many of them holding such high and important statuses. 

Luckily, Kaveh also ends up feeling pretty left out during these discussions, so you'll have someone to chat with or ask questions when you've lost track of the topic at hand. Plus, he's often got some very funny (and surprisingly astute) commentary to add on, even when the subject is painfully dull. 

Once all the politics are out of the way, the conversation tends to ease right up for a little while. Regardless of whether you're at some restaurant or cafe, or just hanging out at someone's house, there's usually snacks available and things will remain super lighthearted for a bit, all jokes and talks of recently released books or occasional infodumps about hyperfixations and special interests. 

On that subject, whenever the stars align and two or more group members have the same special interest or hyperfixation, hoo boy, you can expect them to monopolise the conversation and somehow always drag it back to whatever niche fascinations that they may have accrued lately. 

If you have something you want to talk about, you can rest assured that at least one person in the room will be able to engage. Everybody has their own collection of equally specific and obscure knowledge - with the occasional kind of hilarious overlap. Kaveh and Cyno’s shared fascination with Fontanian machinery, or Tighnari and Al-Haitham’s in-depth discussions of insectoid languages and their potential overlap with human ones are some of the first to come to mind. 

Of course, disagreements do break out every now and then - but everyone is fairly civil for the most part, if a little bit overdramatic and occasionally loud. It's interesting to see how everyone the group tends to take sides almost as soon as a hint of a possible disagreement rears its head. Al-Haitham once questioned Cyno's sense of humour, querying whether it could really be considered comedy if nobody was laughing, and pretty soon, Tighnari and Kaveh were arguing along as passionately as if they'd been personally insulted. 

You tend to be the tiebreaker more often than not - with such an evenly split group, there often tends to be an even balance between whatever arguments. It doesn't help that Al-Haitham likes to break it all down and give pros and cons for both sides (while still keeping his own stance firm), which may make it impossible for you to decide. 

Luckily, it's easy enough for you to guide the group's attention elsewhere. Just offer to make them some hot drinks or ask if someone wants to play a round of Genius Invocation, and it's like the argument never happened at all. 

It's easy to wind up feeling a little out of place in a group of such highly ranking people, but it's like your friends develop a sixth sense for when you're starting to get a little confused or feeling out of your depth. Instead of poking fun at you (like they do for Kaveh), they'll find a way to rope you into the conversation that doesn't put too much pressure on you. Cyno and Tighnari, especially, seem to have a way of relating things to subjects that are in your area of expertise to help you parse them better so you can find your footing and be debating back and forth with the rest of them. 

Game nights tend to get really intense. It's not a case of if someone will flip their lid, it's simply a case of when. Alliances and subsequent betrayals are all too common, and you'll often find yourself being bribed to help someone one-up another person. 

They even have a ‘trophy’ for winning each week's game night. It's a tiny crown, carved out of wood and painted gold. Collei made it and donated it to the group. Whoever possesses the crown also possesses the ultimate bragging rights until the next gaming night (or until they accidentally sit on it and squash it with their big clumsy butt. Kaveh ). 

Though the group is chaotic, noisy, and constantly teasing one another, they're all so supportive of one another and will stick together through thick and thin. As the conversations slow down, sometimes some pretty serious subjects get brought up, heavy venting and other such similar things. 

Though, they're all very understanding if someone isn't in the correct headspace for that sort of talk, and will happily postpone it or talk about it elsewhere if needed. They're also very used to multiple conversations happening at once, so it's easy enough for someone to dodge around the heavy topics if they need to. 

The squad can be almost violently supportive at times. Sometimes you worry that Cyno may be one hundred percent genuine about abusing his status as the General Mahamatra to threaten somebody who mildly inconvenienced you one time in the market last week. 

Overall, the vibes of the friend group are super fun (if a little intense at times). They may not say it directly, but everyone is super glad to have you around, hanging out with them and getting in on all the goofs they make and shaking up their dynamic a little bit.

Please don't repost, steal, copy or otherwise plagiarise my writing! I do not consent for my works to be translated and posted elsewhere, or copy - pasted into bot or AI technology.

[batrachised]

SO.

Dean Priest.

Watching the book trundle its way towards this chapter has been interesting, because as Emily steps into her own voice (although really, she's always had it) - Dean appears. This is going to be a weird analogy, but Dean is kind of like a rotten onion. There are so, so many layers to unpeel there - LM Montgomery seemed to have him as a pet character, he's rife with symbolism and allusion, he's disgusting, he's ominous, he haunts the narrative - but in the end, after all that peeling, you just have a rotten onion. This is my clumsy way of saying my personal opinion (personal! opinion!) is that while looking at Dean, saying "pedophile," and moving on is more than valid, (He is a rotten onion!), there's also key elements to his character that I think are incredibly essential to the book as a whole - specifically, the book's commentary on women writers.

Dean is like the evil version of a kindred spirit. There's some old saying about if you don't listen to your kids, they'll find someone who will, and I think this heavily applies here. It's not lost on me that we get Dean's perspective at length; it feels very significant in a book that, excluding throwaway lines, has Emily's voice front and center - until Dean appears. He's presented as enticing and disturbing all at once - @gogandmagog and @no-where-new-hero had an absolutely brilliant post the other day comparing him to the Big Bad Wolf. Emily seems drawn to and repulsed by him at the same time. He seems to fancy himself as a Rochester, which we can take or leave (I leave lol), and from the beginning, from the very first interaction, he makes clear that he wants to own Emily.

So, if Dean is so awful, why is he presented as appealing at all? I mull over this a lot. The easy explanation is that LMM had no problem with age gaps and grooming, as shown in other stories where she outright endorsed it (unfortunately, it seemed to be a popular trope of the time). But Dean is presented as ominous, and age gaps are criticized, and one minute he's denoted as having "strength, tenderness, and humor," and the next he's flinging "cobweb fetters" over Emily.

I would say (and thank you to @limestreet for the brilliant analysis a few months back, best take on Dean I have ever seen imo), that Dean represents the threat of the patriarchy to women's artistic voices. Of course Dean is appealing - he's a more viable threat to Emily's voice specifically because he's not an Aunt Elizabeth or Uncle Wallace. It's easy enough for her to dismiss them. But Dean quite deliberately enmeshes himself in Emily's life and explicitly (in later books) threatens her writing. Dean is the "it's your writing or me," and he's chillingly effective at making sure to make that a hard choice, when Emily at no other point hesitates to pick her writing, whether when burning her account book, writing on letter bills, risking the wrath of relatives, or any other of the endless hurdles she has to overcome.

Knowing that Dean represents that threat (how women writers often were forced to pick between, one might argue, the 'seduction' of marriage/family and writing), puts a curious light on this passage:

“That’s good. Because you see your life belongs to me henceforth. Since I saved it it’s mine. Never forget that.” Emily felt an odd sensation of rebellion. She didn’t fancy the idea of her life belonging to anybody but herself—not even to anybody she liked as much as she liked Dean Priest. Dean, watching her, saw it and smiled his whimsical smile that always seemed to have so much more in it than mere smiling. “That doesn’t quite suit you? Ah, you see one pays a penalty when one reaches out for something beyond the ordinary. One pays for it in bondage of some kind or other. Take your wonderful aster home and keep it as long as you can. It has cost you your freedom.”

According to Dean, Emily reaching for something out of the ordinary (such as a writing career) must cost her in bondage. And this is where I think of LM Montgomery, miserable in her marriage to a jealous, resentful, unstable husband, LMM for whom Emily was heavily autobiographical, LMM who despite her writing success, had to marry to secure her future. I have never agreed with Dean being Ewen's stand in, but I do think Dean as a character feels pointed.

I'm going to be reblogging past discussions on Dean later so hold onto your hats!

[floatingcatacombs]

Go Nagai was insane for this one

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 8

I like to always have manga of dubious quality on tap for when I’m having trouble sleeping. Ideally, reading a few chapters will distract me, but I won’t want to stay up late shotgunning volumes. Devilman Lady was the ideal manga for this, and this is maybe the last time anyone will ever describe Devilman Lady as "ideal".

An extremely brief introduction is in order. If Osamu Tezuka is the godfather of manga, then Go Nagai is manga’s weird horny uncle. He’s arguably just as influential, the two of them just moved in different circles, each reifying entire genres. Nagai is more or less responsible for magical girls, super robot, and ecchi, and also spent a lot of time in the sphere of supernatural and post-apocalyptic manga. These are fundamentally genres of extremity and ridiculousness, and Nagai dials every one of his works up to 11 by the end, one way or another. Devilman is probably his most famous work over here, and it’s a stone-cold classic for a reason. Nagai has kept revisiting it over the years, with side stories, alternate universes, manga cameos, and even entirely new series that function as stealth sequels such as Violence Jack. But his most notable attempt is Devilman Lady, which is far more than a simple gender-swap of the original.

Devilman Lady is about swimming deep in filth. It’s easily the most disgust-provoking manga I’ve read, with pretty much every content warning under the sun applicable. This is a truly rotten and conspiratorial world that Nagai is depicting. Societal decay manifests in countless forms, including rape, child abuse, homophobia, militarism, and hatred towards immigrants. Anything that could be potentially understood as fanservice is placed right next to or directly within the atrocities at hand, and it's genuinely unclear how much Nagai intended that as commentary. His intentions throughout this whole manga are a bit of an enigma, but what's clear that he is firing on all cylinders.

This is an extremely zeitgeisty 90’s work, with intelligent design debates, the mapping of the human genome, new age paranoia, religious zealotry, and anxiety over pollution all playing out on the pages. Where it breaks from many of its contemporaries is a decisive rejection of the end of history. This is the kind of thing you write when you’re still reeling from the subway sarin gas attacks and your country's role in the Gulf War and subsequent militarization. It’s the perfect manga for capturing a time period when ten to twenty percent of Japan’s population were estimated to have belonged to a new religious movement.

The punchline to all of this is that he doesn’t know how to draw women.

By the back half of Devilman Lady, Nagai’s depictions of hellscapes and grotesque monsters reach near-Berserk levels of detail and technical competency. And yet his female protagonists are still drawn in a drastically simpler 70's style, only now with giant spheres grafted to their chests. Either humans and the infernal are two completely different skillsets, or this was a deliberate artistic decision, and both are difficult to swallow. Either way, we just have to accept the juxtapositions.

one of my favorite pages to show people devoid of context

The finale is just nuts. Go Nagai makes textual the homoeroticism and gender deviance of the original Devilman manga, as the world burns in both nuclear warfare and demonic hellfire. The story starts accelerating at an unfathomable pace, the most inscrutable double mobius reacharound yaoiyuri occurs, and the universe resets once or twice. It makes the endings of Jojo Part 6 and 7 look tame by comparison. There is no way to parse this like a normal manga with a plot and narrative. It is raw id.

This has been a year where I’ve tried to deliberately broaden my comfort zone by engaging with more potentially upsetting works if I think they'll have something interesting to say. This was like jumping into the deep end. Devilman Lady may very well be Go Nagai’s magnum opus. It’s not nearly as tight as the original manga, but it’s a glorious mess, just as radical to its own time as Devilman must have been in the 70s. It made for spectacular insomnia reading. And there’s no way in hell I can ever recommend it.

At age 19, Nagai went through a bout of diarrhea so bad that he convinced himself it was colon cancer, and that he was at death's door. He vowed to leave something behind for the world to remember him by, and began laboring away on manga. And for the last 60 years of his career, he’s written and drawn with the fervor of a man who’s about to shit himself to death. Maybe that’s the real secret.

[hansoeii]

Not a Sylki shipper, but do you genuinely believe they won't be endgame? Like I get it, it seems like Sylvie is not in love with him and they're kinda pushing Lokius (might be just mocking us), but don't you think they could do a 180 in the last episode? It would make no sense, but the writer is a cishet man, who ships Sylki. Marvel is not good at writing romance. I feel sad, because I'm seeing all these people say that Sylki is over, celebrating and I feel like they'll be crushed on Thursday. They could absolutely do a 180, rush the romance with "she was always in love, she was just pushing him away" and make them endgame. Again, it would be bad writing and it'd make zero sense, but the majority of the people don't care about the romance, including my irls, they only want to see the multiverse stuff. So they won't care. And I feel like Disney/Marvel don't care either.

Yes, I totally believe that Sylkie is over and that nothing will happen between them again.

What makes me say that? It's simple. All Sylvie wants is a simple life on the timeline, they've made that clear several times. She only ever follows Loki once that life and her timeline are in danger. And I can't blame her for that. She has no interest in Loki and his friends and what's even more important: she has even less than zero interest in the TVA. She's selfish, she admitted that herself.

The TVA is what's important here. The TVA has become Loki's home, it's the place where he found his family. He (and Mobius) is the heart of the TVA. And he won't part with it, and Sylvie would never willingly stay there for longer than necessary.

She has made it clear by telling Loki to write his own story that their stories are separate ones.

This season so far has been incredibly well written, and I don't believe they're gonna do a big 180 in the finale. I could totally be wrong, but I don't think it's likely.

I believe that Sylvie will be the one to restore everyone's memories in the last episode as her final heroic act and then once the timelines are restored, she will go back to her simple life.

And when it comes to Eric Martin: just ignore him. He's a troll, and I don't believe a single thing he says about any ships. He constantly likes Sylkie tweets and then suddenly switches to liking Lokius tweets. It's best to just watch the show and ignore what any of the creators have to say (besides Tom Hiddleston, I adore his commentary) about it, just draw your own conclusions! And so far, we have gotten 5 episodes that made it clear that there's nothing even close to romantic going on between Sylvie and Loki anymore.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: In Which Chilchuck Begrudgingly Has Feelings for his Coworkers, and Kabru Has...Something. He Sure Has Something Going On Over There.

Before we continue, I feel I should clarify 2 things:

I've been trying, ish, to avoid spoilers for this comic, but I've watched through the Golden Country episode and more importantly I'm so bad at not reading spoiler-y but interesting- and insightful-looking analysis. So, much of this commentary isn't wholly original and any particularly genius theories of future events are likely made with actual foreknowledge.

When I said on the first post that I was starting the comic because "I need to know what happens", what I specifically meant was "I need to know how the Laios-Kabru dynamic ends up, and the general geopolitical situation, so I can accurately daydream what sort of tariffs they'll set in the kingdom of which Laios is definitely not going to be the one managing the political, economic, or social minutia." Tariffs are going to be important, okay. They're a key way a nation-state interacts with other nation-states, especially one with rare materials to trade, powerful neighbors who want them, and the natural barrier of an ocean. Truly, every fantasy series ever should be required to have an epilogue or many an additional book/season/etc of a The West Wing-style depiction of day-to-day governance of whatever resulted from the story's climactic finale.

Okay, back to the liveblog.

.

Inch resting. The manga characters, having met the Mad Mage, keep using she/her pronouns for them, where in the anime they used he/him. I assume one of these is just, like, wrong - some translation choice was made before truth was revealed later in the course of publication?

But it makes SENSE that the characters wouldn't necessarily know, at this point! The Mage's appearance is pretty gender-neutral, especially as an elf, an notably gender-ambiguous race. So the characters in the manga picked one guess and stuck with it, and the characters is the very slightly alternate timeline of the anime picked another and stuck with that!

Now: having used they/them throughout this musing and previously he/him because a) the show and b) that's what I saw in fandom, I think I'll switch to referring to the Mage with she/her pronouns now. Because A) that's how the thing I'm reading apparently will be doing it, and B) they still call her "Lord of the Dungeon", which is obviously the greatest gender option of all.

...however, the manga does keep saying "lunatic magician" rather than "Mad Mage" (caps mine), which is a TOTAL failing in drama. Always alliterate, preferably archaically.

.

Orc woman: Ugh, this halffoot sucks. I'll tolerate his company only as a favor to the vegetable guy.

Orc woman after listening to Chilchuck complain about his coworkers for an hour: Nvm, this halffoot is a worthy and loyal friend of the vegetable seller, and I guess those other guys too. He's just emotionally constipated about it.

.

Laios just has these soft little fond smiles sometimes and I? want to hug him?

.

MY MAN IS BACK!! Kabru wink count: 1 this chapter, 4 total [updated as I read]

.

Corpse Retriever: If you don't report us for trying to get you guys killed so we could collect a retrieval fee, we'll let you kill those two of our guys who are already unconscious and collect that fee yourselves. We'll just take 30% of it, for not telling on you.

Kabru, internally: Hm. Well, I'm not king of this dungeon yet, but nonetheless I feel comfortable passing and executing a just judgement upon you for your many known, presumed and planned crimes. Emphasis on 'executing.'

Kabru aloud: I accept!

Kabru: [starts killing them with a classic faint, wide-eyed smile]

What a guy. He's even holding that knife so well. Look, next he's analyzing social trends and acting ruthlessly to adjust them toward the direction of the greater good!

What a guy. Truly this is a "so my type that it's embarrassing" situation.

.

I can't efficiently crop panels to show all this, but favorite parallels in these chapters full of parallels:

Kabru's breakdown of the Touden party is like Laios eagerly explaining and analyzing the behavior and anatomy of monsters (including, though we don't know it yet, calculations for killing them - though we DO see him saying that humans are easy to kill because he knows all the physical weak points!)

The references throughout these two chapters, by Kabru and his party, to the interconnected socioeconomic dynamics of the island and dungeon - the corrupted system fails to check corpse retrievers, the Island Lord as an annoying but necessary bulwark against the Elves, the dungeon growing hungrier as fewer adventurers go down because there's less money and more risk - are so so so like Senshi and Laiois discussing the dungeon biome's ecosystem and food pyramid.

The whole vibe of the party re: their respective weirdo tallman leaders. We watched Team Laios develop this, recently crowned with Chilchuck's near-tearful argument to turn back for a rest, which means we can recognize it when we're dropped into it with Team Kabru: that "this guy is SUCH a goddamn weirdo, but I already followed him into some level of hell, so I'm obviously not turning back now." Kabru's party does think he's weird - "You remember so much about other people that it's creepy." "Why are you enjoying this?" But they're also pitching in on the speculation like Team Touden all hel cook monsters. Compare:

Also!! Something something predisposed beliefs and presumptions of others... This party is so eager to assume the worst of our party, even though our party objectively saved them from perma-death twice, once from ghosts and once from being eaten by fishmen. Chichuck is greedy and bossy, Senshi smells so...notably...that he's judged to be sketchy af... Kabru is trying his best with what info he has, he knows it's not enough to pass a judgement and he wants more, but it's very...uncomfortable? To see this sort of discussion of people we know are great, when we're so used to watching monsters be killed with exquisite understanding and respect.

...I'll chew on that angle of theme more later. Man, you know how, say, what makes the musical Hamilton so good is at its heart it's just like 5-10 leitmotifs that interweave to create every single song? Dungeon Meshi is like that. Hmm a Dungeon Meshical...

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"Yeah, yeah, we've all heard your weekly lecture about how someone responsible and sociopolitically conscious needs to take the dungeon and the throne or everyone in this region is doomed. None of us can wait to see you flip off the Island Lord to his face. Eat your rations, buddy."

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JUST THE CUTEST, INNOCENTEST, POLITEST, HELPFULEST (WITH NO ULTERIOR MOTIVATIONS WHATSOEVER) YOUNG MAN!! LOOK AT HIS BIG BLUE EYES AND EAGER LITTLE SMILE!

[3 seconds earlier:

I'm obsessed. In the spirit of this comic: I want to eat him with a spoon. I want to take small divots out of him and lick each one carefully off the spoon, luxuriously exploring and enjoying the complex texture and flavor. Like he's a really good pudding. And then I want to see if, if he and Laios kiss, do they both explode in antimatter.

[itwasnotahamster]

- Letters from the Dead - (Part 1)

Langhus, 21 March 1990 | © The Old Nick | Source: Letters from the Dead

The brackets will indicate possible context or corrections (sometimes commentary). - 💜

"Only Black is true, only Death is real!!! Gore is trend! Hello Nick! It's Dead here again. Hey- you're really good at drawing, I use to do some drawing stuff myself. I enclose something of it in this letter. Maybe we together can work something out, maybe even in Metal Destruction…? You asked of releases, if we need some artworks for that... Well we rarely give out much and as for the next release we'll probably have some photograph instead. But if we would need something that you might feel for help us out with I'll tell of it. So what we can use drawings for is for stuff like flyers, ads and letter­pages. So far I have done the drawings for that... well the main reason of that is that we have a (old!) xerox mashine and I'm the one in the band that 'can' draw. It's not so often that I have time left to spend hours or sometimes days by making drawings and too many don't like that kind of drawings I make (but fuck them wimps!). But onto the Deathlike Silence Prod. now. The 2nd edition of the 1st release on DSP. - Merciless is out now, the one you get here as promo. We're looking for distributors everywhere and everybody who can sell 10 (or more) records will receive a copy for free + that 10 records will be cheaper. As soon as this the 2nd ed. has paid, Imperator will go in studio.

Imperators LP will contain 8-10 songs (depending on how many "old demo songs" they'll use - but it'll be new trax as well) and it'll be entitled "The time before time". After that it'll probably be the colombian Masacre as the next release. Masacre will be very soon release a 7- inches with 3 demo songs on the greek label Scene of Love. That's a new started label and I hope they can give out enough copies, not limited ed. of it. Of course we give the bands free hands and they're not bounded to use at all, but I'm thinking of the fact that Masacre is selling so much... Only in Colombia their 1st, and only demo sold 1000 copies ( which is more than our Deathcrush demo has sold worldwide...). We can only press up 1000 copies each time of every edition of DSP, and the first ed. Of Merciless sold out as fast as we could pack and post it. This second ed. we recieved [received] for not a so long time ago will depend on how much stamps we can get, of how soon it'll sell out. In Norway it's very hard to sell records - it's far away from USA or South America and I don't think any real scene exists here. Do you think you can take care of some distribution/selling of DSP releases, or you maybe know someone else who's interested? [True dedication]. I think Merciless will be very easy to sell in Italy. Many zines exists there and we recieve many letters from there also. We also sell other records (given out by various underground labels) but it can be so different of what records of others releases we sell 'cos we usually don't get so many of them, so they sell out so soon. But anyway - I can tell of what we presently have got (except of Merciless)

LP's (£10000 + postage)

Agressor/Loudblast (split LP, France) "Licenced to thrash"

Arakain (Czechoslovakia, speed metal - I do not like this one!) "Thrash the Trash"

Nomed (France)... very boring mainstream... "Like..."

Abomination (USA)

Disharmonic Orchestra/Pungent Stench (Austria, split LP)

Malicious Intent (Canada) "Shades of black"

7's (£5000 + postage)

Asphyx (Holland, Limited ed. 1000 copies) "Mutilating Process"

Atrocity (Germany) "Blue Blood"

Pungent Stench (Austria) "Extreme Deformity"

Disharmonic Orchestra (Austria) "Successive Substitution"

Do not print this in Metal Destruction, I will explain it to you, ok. If you want any of these records above, please tell of how many and of what records so I can see how much the postage will be. Now over to Mayhem. For the first time we've been in studio and recorded 2 songs (first time with this line-up I mean). It'll be released on Chicken Brain Records, a swedish kind of underground label some time in this autumn. It'll be 8-19 other (swedish) bands on it, among them Merciless. I don't know the title of this compilation LP/CD. Our songs that'll be on it are "The Freezing Moon" and "Carnage". The Freezing Moon is a new one and pretty different from our other songs, as example it's a long guitar solo on a very long Doom part on it and that's because we wanted to have a solo at only one track (of our new ones). Carnage was made in '85 (!) so it's really old. It was on the 1st demo/reh - Pure Fucking Armageddon (released in only 100 copies and not available) but with the thought of the very bad sound on it we feeled for playing it again and try to keep the original sound of it. I'll tape these trax for ya but I'm not so sure of if it'll be enclosed in this letter or if I'll put this letter togeather [together] with the Merciless record but anyhow you'll get this tape. You can record it to others if you like to but please don't trade it, and I'll record some else bands too for filling out the rest of the tape. Have you heard of the INCREADIBLY KILLING GREAT band Tormentor from Hungary? Their demo is about 4 years old but it sounds like the Death/Black metal bands of today. We try to find out if they want a deal on DSP. But unfortunately they hardly speak any English at all so it seems like neither them or us understood it... We think of releasing a full-lengtht LP of Mayhem but it seems to take a fucking longtime before we got material enough for it... The only we know about it is a title that MUST be used - De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas. That was about all future plans I can tell of I guess. I look forward to see Metal Destruction. There's a possibility that we can sell it also, but I can't say if for sure.

About Satanism... well, I'd like to join a very underground and Illful, Evil and Grim Coven. I think you know of the hassles by finding any or getting any contact with a such. I do NOT like what's created by Anton LaVey like 1st Church of Satan. I came in contact with a dude who's a degree in the American Satans Sons - Church of Satan and he explained of it has nothing to do with LaVey at all. I asked of if it does exist in Europe also and of what it is exactly... well he didn't reply. But I heard later thet Satans Sons shall exist in Europe but I still don't know in which countries it is. In Norway it's not much of this, but in Sweden (-I am swedish) that 1st Church shall be in Stockholm (the capital there) and it shall be about 5 churches built by satanic sects, used only by satanists, mostly it's under christian churches - like the one under "Mariakyrkan" (Mary's Church) in the South of Stockholm where the 1st Church of Satan use to hang around at. I know it exists really Dark covens that use human sacrifices and are eating human flesh - them are those I try to find. I do not know much about magic and I can't say I'm a practicer of it 'cos I havn't succed. What is depending on what one can do in magic (all of its kind) is of what books one can get...those are hidden in libraries and so hard to even see... 'cos of course they don't let anyone even see them. You must be a scientist or something like if you would see the microfilms of that kind of books. A great library of many various kinds of magical arts and the Blackest of Black Arts too is the British Museum in London. But it's so damned difficult to get ones claws on those books. One book I really wanna get is De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas, unfortunately it exists only in one copy... are you practicing any magic and do you know of any covens? Have you seen/heard/felt anything supernatural? I have but I didn't understand much of what that was and I think the most of it was only so-called echoes from the past or the future [I am curious about this]. Do you know anything about astral planes and out-of body travelling? You seem to be into it and I agree about stupid trendmakers so it is something that I feel I can tell you of. I had a weird experience once, I had inner bleedings and it couldn't be found at x-rays so when it continued to bleed and bleed I finally fainted and dropped down the floor 'cos I run out of blood. The heart had no blood left to beat and my veins/artairs were almost emptied of blood. "Tecnically" I was dead. At that moment I fell down (into a door I heard of later) I saw a strange blue colour everywhere, it was transparent so I could, for a short moment, see everything in blue, till something shining white and "hot" surrounded me. What happened later is out of interest, I woke up when some ambulance men came and drove me to a hospital and there the bastards of surgery started to cut me up at the wrong side so I got a huge scar for that. However, it's someone I know who's had many out of body experiences and is using magic of various kinds and knows much more than I do of "supernatural" experiences, that I asked of this 'cos it was so strange about those colours. She told me that the first 'plane' in the astral world has the colour blue. The "earthly" plane has the colour black, then comes a grey one that is very near the earthly one and is easy to come to. The next one further is blue, and then it gets brighter and brighter till it "stops" at a white-shining one that can't be entered by mortals. IF any mortal succee enter it, that one is no longer a mortal and can not come back to the other planes nor back to this earth. After the white plane or level or whatever it goes further with other colour I don't know of, there only spirits and great sorcerers can travel. I was told that the white plane I then entered, without I knew it, was the dead world and I died. But I also got thrown back after a short time which very rarely happens. So of what I've heard of I have some kind of purpose to achieve here."

Reached the limit for this one, I will add on!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

You might’ve already got this before, and I’m asking this in genuinely good faith.

Your essay was very interesting, and convinced me of Erikar as a ship reading. I also really enjoyed your dissection of Eridan as a very honest person drawn into destructive behavior. It very much lines up with his status as a Prince of Hope! One who destroys conviction/belief through conviction/belief.

What confused me was your insistence on the hidden hand of the author. Death of the Author and all that, what’s implied in the text can be taken on its own separate from commentary but you seem to be doing an autopsy— the text implies [this] so *Hussie* must have intended for [this] and then tried to cover it up. If they genuinely thought it was a better ending, why not do it? Why the secrecy, why the feints? I think it’s a little conspiracy-brained to insist on a secret “better ending” that we don’t have author’s word or drafts on.

I’m also a little drifted on your frustration with the deaths of the trolls? You write that the theme of Homestuck— a standard coming-of-age story, a reckoning with society and the exit from youth— is undercut by the deaths of the trolls, because that means they *had* to die, in *punishment*. I disagree. Their deaths are tragic, not just.

Homestuck has a lot of methods of revival, the choice to (for the most part) perma-kill some characters (the trolls for one, and then AR, WQ, and WK) is a deliberate choice to make death mean something. If dying doesn’t mean anything, what are the narrative stakes? Murderstuck marks Gamzee as a threat, Eridan as a tragedy. The deaths there are meant. To be sad. To demonstrate that sometimes kids don’t get to grow up, that sometimes the society they live in cuts them down.

Homestuck is a sad story at times! It doesn’t need an ending where everyone gets to live to keep its coming-of-age conclusion.

I hope this made sense. I’m not trying to attack you, I’m just skeptical of some of your points. I hope you go on to do more analysis in the future!

If you want to believe that, go ahead 👍 again, arguing my points on that front would require its own entire essay, lol, so I'm not really planning to do that as the answer to an ask. The only thing I really want to say here is that while Homestuck is often sad, as you say, its underlying tone is unwaveringly hopeful right up until Game Over/the Retcon, and even kind of beyond that. If you prefer a sad story, then you can have a sad story, but it's just not a reading consistent (to me) with the entire rest of what Homestuck is.

For example, the whole narrative grapples with the debate of predestination vs. free will. Do things happen in Homestuck because they have to, or because characters are making choices? But with the introduction of John's retcon powers, it lands firmly in the "free will" side of the debate: the retcon powers outright defy the power of stable time loops - a reflection of how Breath is associated with freedom and choice. This is the optimistic option.

Another thing the narrative grapples with is the realness vs. fakeness of magic. I don't think it's hard to argue that between LE's "evil wizard" status and Godtier!Calliope's wand-induced black hole that the arrow falls firmly in the realm of magic being undeniably real. This is the optimistic option (and yet another narrative element that Eridan is extremely relevant to).

Moreover, even post-Retcon, there are elements that are kept that soften the tragedy already present in the story - for example, the concept of the Ultimate Self, and the implication that all surviving characters will eventually achieve it, takes the edge off all their doomed and dead counterparts, who won't actually be relegated to double death in the dream bubbles, since in a way, they'll live on through their alpha counterparts. It turns those sacrifices from bitter to bittersweet, and serves as a counterpoint to common takes like John being sad that he doesn't know the version of his friends that exist post-Retcon. The inclusion of it in the post-Retcon story, even with its botched delivery, says to me that Homestuck is still intended to be optimistic at its core, even with the extreme Giving Up that Hussie did.

And let's not forget how Calliope gets to come back to life, no strings attached, and that her stated purpose is only to live. Up to the end, the tone is that of HOPE, and I think there's no mistake that HOPE is supposed to be what defeats LE.

As I said in replies on that post, as an artist, I just can't imagine spending literal years, and literally a million words and thousands of images, writing something that's so thematically and tonally consistent, only to hard swerve right at the end, without extenuating circumstances.

And the thing is, there WERE extenuating circumstances, and they're fairly well-documented.

The kickstarter got funded, and while the story is muddled, we know the production of the game was extremely troubled, and Hussie was having difficulty being a project lead for that while also grappling with everything else. Everything else being, of course, an ever-increasing number of irons in the fire - more third-party artists he had to commission and manage, more merchandise he had to be on top of, bigger updates to sate the demands of the fanbase.

Which, speaking of, was infamously one of the most awful and toxic fanbases to ever exist, and one that Hussie has deliberately attempted to distance himself from since. I can't imagine the kind of daily abuse, harassment, callouts, and worse that Hussie had to endure as Homestuck's creator during the fandom's peak years. I don't blame him at all for turning against them.

Therefore, given the way the tone and themes hard swerve, the way several characters get bent entirely out of shape (you're telling me Karkat had several means before him of bringing his dead friends back and WOULDN'T SAY ANYTHING???), the way several plot threads are simply left dangling in the air, and the way some characters reach really weird and unpleasant conclusions (davepeta, gcatavrosprite), I think it's actually LESS reasonable to assume that the ending we got was the original plan. Hussie saw that to do the ending he wanted to do back in act 4, he'd need to write for a year, maybe two years more, and then looked at his mounting stress and pressure, and looked at the fanbase he'd come to hate, and just went "nope." And I can't even really blame him for it, lol. In his position I'd probably do the same.

Also, please don't mistake "the deaths are undone" for "the deaths will not have mattered" - I think there's a reason that the game over timeline characters still exist post-Retcon. Their arcs don't end with their deaths, and their failures are weights on them that must be narratively resolved - I believe that they go on to be the ones to defeat LE, although I have much less evidence to support this. It just makes narrative sense to me - the post-retcon team focuses down the Felt, various Jack Noirs, and the Condesce - the latter of which is their final boss, as the ultimate representation of the shitty society they're doing away with on their path to creating a new one.

Meanwhile, the dead and "irrelevant" versions of the characters, the ones who grappled with and were harmed the most by what LE represents - immaturity, selfishness, and cruelty - go on to band together after death, and defeat him in the bubbles, a culmination of their vengeance for the havoc he wreaked. And with him being destroyed in the bubbles by the dead and irrelevant, symbolically, he will be rendered nothing more than a bad dream for the waking, relevant, and alive.

Thus Gamzee is still an antagonist, although it becomes (Gamzee) and (Equius) who go on to form LE. Those deaths and those failures still matter, they still happen, they still have narrative weight. Even without the Game Over versions of the characters still existing and still being important, the decision to welcome antagonists like Gamzee and Eridan back into the fold is rendered more complex and more significant BECAUSE we've seen how badly they can go.

The speech originally given by post-Retcon Vriska to (Vriska) is also, to me, a weird artifact of this hypothetical original ending - as it exists within the actual comic, it's said by the wrong person to the wrong person - Vriska with her character development reset to a (Vriska) who's had her characterization destroyed in order to make the first Vriska seem more right. I think originally, it would've come from (Karkat) to Meenah, the latter of which being the one whose idea it was to fuck off with the treasure, and who caused the Beforus team's worst problems, and who has a track record of fucking off whenever she's tasked with taking responsibility. Thus, it would serve as a conclusion to Meenah and Karkat's arc, as well as Game Over Sadkat's arc specifically, would convince Vriska to go with him, and would give Meenah some narrative commeuppance, which would kickstart some sort of Beforan troll feelings jam that would rally them together to actually be useful for once in their lives/afterlives and contribute to the LE fight.

Again, if you PREFER the sad ending, I can't stop you, but the reason I'm going in on there being an "original ending" that isn't sad is because the sad ending doesn't make narrative sense. Why is the ultimate self speech coming from a combination of two characters that barely spoke? Why is it triumphant that Meenah and character-development-reset Vriska get to be the big goods in the fight with LE? Why do multiple prophecies suddenly get dropped right at the end when all other prophecies DO come true? Why does Karkat spend so long being sad his friends are dead, and also why is he deliberately set up as the Friends Troll (blood = bonds), and then suddenly not care that multiple methods exist for bringing back his friends? Why bother softening the blow of all the dead/irrelevant alternate selves if they're intended to be fully tragic? Why introduce a mechanic that would let them save whoever they want consequence-free and then not use it to do that? Why does Roxy love wizards so much and then not get to meet the wizard boy? Why is the entire rest of Homestuck so carefully crafted, so narratively satisfying, so thematically and tonally consistent, and then all of it goes to shit right at the end?

So yeah lol this is the SHORT version lol this isnt even the LONG version of this essay

[thesiltverses]

Is there a reason why the Trawlerman seems to be most associated with the tides and saltwater creatures like crabs and barnacles even far upstream of the delta?

I think it's ultimately because we were interested mainly in the Trawler-man as a god of change (or at least a god who's meant to be a god of change), which lent itself more to the shifting aspects of a tidal river / the sedimental aspects of a river in its lower reaches, and we were interested in the environment of the delta more as an overall foundation for the series.

And also crabs and barnacles are fun, and they were on my mind as raw material in a body horror sense.

But if I was being held hostage in a small cabin by an angry hydrologist and they were waving a gun around and yelling, 'tell me why the Trawler-man is only representative of a small portion of the fluvial ecosystem and is associated with fauna that simply could not flourish in a freshwater environment, you unscientific son of a bitch' and I had to give an in-universe explanation to keep them shooting me in the face, I'd probably say,

"well, look, it's actually meant to be a commentary on religious conflict; we should understand that the Trawler-man as a regionally-specific avatar of the White Gull river has proven triumphant over other gods of the river at some point over the history of the setting.

This all-conquering monoculture has had a flattening cultural effect on the people of the river and their understanding of it. But in this world where reality is shaped by belief it's also had a tangible impact on the environment of the waters themselves - there's been a polluting effect on the entirety of the White Gull, transforming the river into effectively a saltwater environment.

The crab-angels and silt-things of the Parish are invasive and alien species, mistakenly heralded as the firstborn inhabitants of the river. This is meant to be an unnatural thing deemed natural by time, tradition, and by established power, which is key to our understanding of the overall setting."

Which, in fairness, might actually be true - it's been a long time since we started writing this stuff, so God knows I've probably forgotten.

And we have hinted, and will continue to hint, that there have been other gods of the river besides the Trawler-man.

But more importantly, it'd buy me time to loosen the ropes, and the hydrologist keeps stalking around the cabin taking swigs from that vodka bottle and peering out of the windows while muttering about how they'll create their own true god of the river and I'll be its first sacrifice.

So if I choose my moment well and I jump them when their back is turned, maybe I can get the gun off th

[bluetomorrows]

Clone High: It's About the Contrast

Something I've seen a lot of is Clone High S2 redesigns. People taking the new characters of S2 of Clone High and changing the designs, usually cause they don't like what we did get. Some of these are neat. I saw one that tries to combine their new designs with their S1 designs from when these characters were incidentals. A lot of them seem to take the personality out of the design. Most of them look hard to animate, but that isn't the point I'm trying to make.

People seem to really dislike these new designs. There are valid design reasons (some are a bit overdesigned, and they definitely clash with the S1 designs) but it just seems people are mad at them in concept. Especially Harriet Tubman. How could they turn Harriet Tubman into... this?

It's outrageous! And yeah, it is. It's supposed to be. That's the joke. In the 20 years since Season 1, the Clone High Fandom has grown and shipped and gossiped and a lot of people have forgotten that the incongruity of the characters is part of the joke. Joan of Arc was not in fact a goth girl who constantly thirsts over tall men. The same goes for several other characters.

Harriet Tubman isn't Harriet Tubman. She shares her DNA but she is decidedly a different person. That's the point of Clone High, the show is less about historical figures interacting in a high school setting and more about how these people might be if they were raised under different circumstances. Ideologically, Clone High is an argument against great man theory.

Gandhi changed the world. But when he isn't born and raised in British controlled India under very specific circumstances, he's just some guy. The same goes for Cleopatra, JFK, Joan of Arc,, Jesus Christ, and yes, even Confucius, Frida Kahlo, and Harriet Tubman. It's circumstances that create people, not people making the circumstances.

Imagine if you had the chance to have a conversation with the real Harriet Tubman. What do you think she would say? How would she act? I'm sure she'd probably be an interesting and nice person, but she wouldn't be a character fit for a wacky animated sitcom. You don't really expect former slaves to be bubbly like that.

It both literally and metaphorically takes the basic DNA of these figures and subverts and modifies their existence through modern society, or rather the tropes of teen dramas. Not just asking what would happen if these people were in high school but if they were ordinary people. Instead of being a hero whose life is in danger, Harriet Tubman is a girl who gossips and whose biggest worry is becoming a basic bitch.

Look at the S2 finale. The board of shadowy figures have assembled their great men and put them in competition. They'll weed out the best of the best to become the great men of the future. And out of about 100 clones, only one actually makes it to the end. Everyone else fails. The one clone who does make it, Joan, is born again into extreme circumstances. Being left for dead by her friends and suffering a psychic break. There is no such thing as great men, just extraordinary situations.

I think this theme of subverting these legendary figures is something that should be kept in mind when talking about the show. It isn't really a show about historical figures, just historically-themed characters. And that's okay. It's very funny when done well! It's a cartoon and it really acts like it. It was never asking to be taken as a serious drama and definitely wasn't asking to be a commentary on historical figures. It simply parodied its contemporary teen dramas a little too well and we got invested in joke characters and everything changed. The S2 writers were in a very unenviable place, and I applaud them for taking things in bold new directions. If you haven't watched S2 or even just watched a few episodes, I'd recommend giving it another chance. It's not perfect but it gets better as it continues. It has its own distinct feel and style while still understanding what "the point" of the original was.

Also Kahlopatra for life ❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 💙 💜

[theredengineapologist]

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone! 💙❤

Of course, I had to do something Jameward for the occasion. Even though this meme is literally called "Understand my Ship in 5 Minutes", I still wanted to include some commentary/headcanons because I've been DYING to talk about them forever. So if you're interested, read on under the cut!

(Also, please note that the interpretation of the characters depicted here is specifically for my AU, TTTE: Sudrian Boys)

NAMES: For the sake of making sure their names fit in the boxes, I used the last names they picked for themselves before they got married. When they do eventually get legally married, they'll combine their last names together (a conclusion they got to after much bickering). So respectively, they will be James and Edward Hughes-Pettigrew.

GENDER + SEXUALITY:

James is GAY. GAY GAY HOMOSEXUAL GAY. Sorry not sorry, but there is not a woman-liker bone in his body.

Edward, on the other hand is bi. Part of me thinks he tends to prefer the company of men, but maybe that's just because there's significantly more male engines on Sodor. Also he is nonbinary. This will be something I explore later. But to summarize, Edward never felt entirely male in the strict sense that humans define it. However, he felt the need to be the consistent, steady, "old reliable" his peers saw him as, so he never questioned what others chose to call him. This changed when "The Great Shift" happened (aka, the engines learning to shift into a human-like form). Edward saw an opportunity to experiment with his presentation, and so he had a brief stint where he tried going in the opposite direction, presenting as a woman named Alice. As fun as it was, however, he found that it didn't feel quite right either. To him, "Edward" was where he felt most at home. He's not a man or a woman, he is just "Edward". Edward uses "he/they" pronouns because those feel the most neutral to them.

HORNY LEVEL: I will not be elaborating.

AWKWARDNESS LEVEL: I don't think Edward and James ever really had an "awkward phase". Before they got together, they always felt comfortable with each other as close friends would. They never really had that thing of "oh I want to tell him I like him but I also don't want him to know". Edward always knew he liked James, he just didn't say anything because he didn't think James was interested. And once James admitted to himself that he liked Edward, he confessed and it was all smooth sailing from there. To be honest, not much changed when they moved from "close friends" to "boyfriends". They still act like close friends, just with added kissing privileges.

JEALOUSY LEVEL: At the point where they're at in their relationship right now, both James and Edward are pretty secure, so it's rare for either of them to act jealous.

From Edward's perspective, he knows that James is young (relatively speaking) and very attractive, so it's hardly surprising to see that other people would try to flirt with him. There's a small pang of jealousy that comes from him thinking James would have preferred someone younger or stronger, but that quickly goes away once he sees James return to being on his arm and very proudly proclaiming he's already spoken for.

From James's perspective, he thinks Edward is the real catch between the two of them. Plus, it's not often that other people would try to shoot their shot with the silver fox. So when other people do try to get a little too close for comfort, James would certainly be stewing in jealousy. If the feeling gets to a certain point, he'd probably make himself known. But once they get home, the situation gets explained out, and they're cuddling on the couch with a blanket and some tea, James finds he can let go of the jealous feeling relatively quickly.

BIG SPOON/LITTLE SPOON: Majority of the time, James is the little spoon. He likes to be held and Edward LOVES holding him. James's favorite thing is when Edward keeps their hand on his chest. But occasionally, they do switch places, especially if Edward has a particularly hard day. Sometimes Old Iron wants to be cuddled too.

LENDS/BORROWS CLOTHES: Both of them tend to steal borrow clothes from each other, but under different circumstances.

At home, it's relatively commonplace to see Edward walking around in one of James's pants, shirts, or even his prized red coat. But more often than not, these are cases of Edward just picking them up of his own accord and James just letting him have it.

Outside, it's James who more actively does the borrowing and Edward who does the lending. James likes to go out ✨IN STYLE✨ without taking into consideration pesky things like the weather. So when James (inevitably) gets cold at night, Edward is the one to lend him his jacket.

PET NAMES: They don't use pet names often, but they do use some of the more basic ones on occasion. For James, Edward would sometimes call him "Jamie", "darling", "dear", or his personal favorite, "love". James usually calls Edward by his full name because Edward prefers it, but sometimes he might slip in an "Eddie", "baby", or a "kitten" in there just to make the old man flustered.

AFFECTION THROUGH WORDS/ACTIONS: This one might seem paradoxical, but let me explain.

James is more receptive to affection through words because he's used to being dismissed. In his worst moments, he can be pretty down on himself as his insecurities eat away at him. At times like these, Edward knows exactly what to say to help James pick himself back up again. It's especially meaningful because Edward absolutely means everything he says. He's not the type to lie just to make James feel better. He's honest and straightforward. If James did something wrong that needs calling out, Edward will tell him (politely of course). So when Edward tells James that he's wonderful or that he's a "really splendid engine", he 100% means it. And you can tell from just the look in his eyes that Edward loves his red boyfriend SO DAMN MUCH.

Conversely, Edward is more receptive to affection through actions. Edward is always the one out caring for everyone else and tends to forget to care for himself too. But at the same time, he's very much the type to never ask for help (even if he needs it). James knows this, so he goes the extra mile to help take some of the load off. If Edward is especially tired one day, James will step up and do Edward's share of the housekeeping without being asked. He'll volunteer to go supervise Bill and Ben so that Edward can take a day off. He'll fix up a warm bath for Edward after a hard day. Anything to make sure Edward is taken care of, James will do it. Not only that, but James is also the one planning most of their dates. ;)

CONFESSING:

Edward NEVER had any plans to confess to James. Romantic relationships are uncommon amongst engines since there's no real use for them. Plus, he didn't think James would be interested in a plain old iron like himself (as he views himself anyway). So Edward was just content to just feel his feelings and never act on them.

James, on the other hand, took several years to both realize and accept that he was in love with Edward. But once he got to that point, he confessed fairly quickly. Sure, there was a normal amount of hesitation and worry that Edward might not feel the same. But he was about 90% sure that Edward loved him back so he didn't end up worrying that much leading up to the confession.

CAN'T DRIVE LOL: Even as engines, they can't drive themselves. Plus, they know trains are the superior way to travel. So if they ever need to go somewhere while shifted into humans, they just catch one of their friends' trains. I don't think they've ever even sat in a car before.

COOKING: Edward loves to cook (especially baking). It was one of the first hobbies he picked up after learning how to shift and he would often make meals to share for the entire Steam Team. James, on the other hand, can cook, but not nearly as well as Edward. He doesn't know as many dishes as Edward. Even the ones they both know, James's, for some reason, aren't as good. The only time James would ever take over cooking is if Edward is feeling too exhausted to do so. There's a mutual acknowledgement between them (and also the rest of the Steam Team) that Edward is the superior chef (and he also enjoys it more). So if he can help it, James prefers to leave the cooking to Edward.

PDA: James absolutely LOVES PDA. He will take literally every opportunity he can to dote on Edward in public so that the entire island knows that they're together, much to Edward's embarrassment. Edward secretly loves the PDA too, and he appreciates how proud James is to be his boyfriend (and later husband). But Edward would never admit it. He tries really hard to at least appear decent in public. That said, when the opportunity arises, Edward does like getting to flip the script and fluster James in front of onlookers.

OVERPROTECTIVE/CHILL GOING: Both are more than reasonably protective over each other, but for different reasons and under different circumstances.

James gets into accidents relatively often, usually as the result of his own dumbassery. So Edward has gotten to a point where he's not too concerned if James winds up in an accident again. He'll still worry a little and warn James to be more careful next time, but Edward knows after a trip to the Steamworks that his boyfriend will be good as new again.

It's when they're shifted into humans when Edward becomes more protective of James.

Because of the way James looks, it's unfortunately not uncommon for James to get harassed while shifted as a human. When this happens, Edward goes into full protective mode to make sure his beloved stays safe. Thankfully, it doesn't happen too often. But it does happen often enough that Edward feels like he has to keep close watch of James while they're traveling after nightfall.

James, on the other hand, always has a bit of worry for Edward at the back of his mind. He knows Edward is capable of handling himself, but he also knows that Edward is old and doesn't recover from accidents as quickly or easily as he does. He worries that if the damage is too great, Edward could be scrapped. So if Edward were to end up in any sort of accident, James would go ballistic. He's puffing over right away to make sure his beloved is okay and may or may not have a fierce word with whoever caused the accident. The same thing goes when they are in human form. If Edward were to end up in some sort of fight, James would put himself in harms way to make sure Edward is protected (even though in human form, Edward is actually physically stronger than James).

RELATIONSHIP EXPERIENCE: Neither of them had any relationship experience before each other, they were each other's firsts. You can maybe argue that Edward has slightly more experience because he's had crushes on other people in the past, but fleeting attraction that is never pursued could hardly count for true experience. Their whole relationship is something that James and Edward are navigating together. It's new and at times a little scary, but there's nobody else James and Edward would rather be with than each other.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

I saw the post about technology and I got to wonder, in a world where tablets and robots and tanks and other technology exist, why is it that a majority of Etheria still live in simple villages like it's the 1600s or something? There could be something I'm missing but if they ever explained why Etheria as a whole never adopted technology, please tell me

i don't think you missed anything, i think spop's worldbuilding is just that bad. i guess it makes sense for plumeria to be less advanced and more connected with nature because perfuma probably wants it that way (although i'm not sure that's a good reason, considering how there's a war going on and they'll need all the help they can get). but it doesn't make sense for the rest of the kingdoms.

if i remember correctly, brightmoon was the biggest out of all of them, and they didn't seem to be much advanced either. heck, they didn't even have proper prisons and the creators just made tongue in cheek jokes about it instead of actually doing their job. oh haha look, angella is locking the evil sorceress in a guest room and she removed all the pillows, look at how incompetent these fools are!

but i digress. coming back to the topic, it would even make sense if in this world, only the rich had access to technology. it would make for some interesting social commentary (like if the castles and royalty had proper protection and are able to use tech to their advantage, while the general public suffered due to the lack of it) but that would require the writers to actually use their brains.

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/759034203501363200/anon-who-brought-genitals-references-to-shipping#notes

"But saying you read slash over other stuff bc you want dick4dick is bioessentialist rhetoric bc of the implication that it is unique to slash and bc it ignores a lot of fandom." Idk but why can't you say that? If I say "I read slash over other stuff bc I want dick4dick" it can still be very much true that slash has more dick4dick per 100 stories, compared to other spaces, fandom or what have you, but that doesn't mean there's exclusively penis in all slash. Hell, even without the trans aspect, there's tons of genderbending slash to either M/F or even F/F which has been a staple for years, and where you're get PIV, or Pussy4Pussy,

I think your biggest problem is that you're kinda combining random intentions or commentary, then drawing farfetched conclusions, because you don't agree with it, or have some other issues.

Here's what I got from your first paragraph: "I read slash bc I like d4d" = "implies the claim that d4d is exclusive to slash" which is therefore "bioessentialism" Didn't know where to put the "ignores a lot of fandom." I'm also not sure how it actually ignores other fandom. All of that making basically no sense because it could just as much imply that d4d just more likely, or has a larger presence and community in slash parts of fandom. "I don't even have a problem with "I read slash bc there tends to be more dicks there." It is the idea that implying it is unique to slash I find bioessentialist and not reflective of modern fandom." Yeah but that is incredibly nit picky if your entire problem is between the wording of "I read slash over other stuff bc it has d4d" versus "I read slash bc there /tends to be more/ dick there." There's no particular implication in either statement. You seem to have basically decided that one of them implies something you don't like, and the other is more accpetable because you think so. All based on your own preference on how you'd want it phrased.

Certain fandoms and spaces are going to be assumed to have more of some content, that doesn't mean that's exclusively what's going to be available, or that only a certain demographic is gonna write/draw it or consume it either. It also doesn't mean that going in with a pretty clear interest in a certain kind of dynamic makes you a bio-essentialist, or implies the fandom is bio-essentialist. At most it'll just tell us what the biggest category of creators and consumers might end up being, you know, as makes sense. People want certain things, so they'll flock to where most of that specific art is going to be posted and spread. Nowhere in slash is there a claim to how much d4d there is, only that there's more than you might find when compared to other fandom spaces where slash isn't as common. So it could simply be 50% d4d and "everything else." or even 99% d4d and "everything else". Like if I want d4d, I'm probably not gonna specifically go to an Ecchi fandom to get d4d. It might still have some d4d for various reasons, -Futa can be popular with some ecchi, so you might get Futa4regular girl, but I just won't assume I'll get a lot of d4d as is, especially not with male characters of any type. Is that bioessentialism because I assume based on the fandom and spaces what I'll see most of is big boobed female characters? Or is that just a logical conclusion based on who Ecchi panders to, and what the people in those fandoms have set as a precedence with their fandom behaviour? So from there we could also say that the slash fandoms are simply gonna have more of a certain type of content because that's what the fandom space prefers or has built to be expected.

--

[zenaidamacrouras1]

for director's commentary on hot neighbor, when does buck start pursuing steve in earnest? how much of steve's conversation with wanda about the coffee shop guys did bucky overhear?

Oh interesting. I'm not 100% sure I know the answer to this question. But I'm really excited to think about it.

First - this is the ask and this is the fic: Hot Neighbor and the Sunshine Baby

Second question - I don't think Bucky overhears the conversation. If he had, he would have been to shy to walk in and turned right around to head back to his lab and breathe with his head between his knees. He really did only hear, "Nobody needs that much cake" and then jumped right in.

Okay, so, one of my favorite things I imagined about Bucky is that right when he decides for sure that he and Natasha have to get divorced, when Ruby is maybe 2, he gets low key obsessed with his hot neighbor and starts having these fantasies about him, and at this point he knows Steve is trans, and he is polite and respectful even in his fantasies, and this is when he gets really into researching how to be a respectful lover as a cis person with a trans partner. He's...a meticulous guy.

But it's really a fantasy for him. He sees Steve as safe because he doesn't think they'll ever be together. The guy is just convenient and divorce is terrible.

So maybe he's a little closed off in those early meetings with Steve because he feels really guilty for all the things he's been doing with imaginary Steve in his head without permission....

I think Bucky is absolutely hooked on Steve when he kicks the car in the intersection. It took Bucky a few days to puzzle the feelings out. Before that, he'd found Steve attractive but really didn't know anything about him.

But post car-assault, Bucky can't stop thinking about Steve and how fierce he looked and how righteous but also just really nice and easy to talk to he is and also how much he wants to lick him all over.

I didn't work this in the fic but I think Steve would leave Rosie at Ms. Rodriguez's on Saturday/Sunday mornings and go running in these tiny shorts. Bucky absolutely rearranged his schedule at great lengths to try and accidentally cross paths with Steve in his tiny running shorts. And then never actually talked to him beyond nodding hi, like, while standing at the mailboxes or drawing hopscotches on the front walk with Ruby, and Bucky hates himself but can't stop.

Steve has no idea this whole drama is playing out every weekend.

(Later they go running together and Bucky requests Steve wears the shorts and then Bucky has his way with Steve/tiny shorts and it's all very healing for Bucky).

The second Bucky had Steve's phone number, he was torn between not wanting to scare Steve off but desperately wanting try and get to know him. He definitely would have been madder about the haircut if he hadn't had a massive crush on Steve.

He told himself he'd be fine with him and Steve just being friends, and maybe he doesn't even like Steve that much but he's just lonely and that's why he's so attracted to Steve, but he also can't resist getting a little flirty like every 15 seconds and seeing how Steve will react. He's a scientist.

So he's doing his little flirty test balloons, and feeling like he's making progress, and that he actually likes Steve for who he is and not just because of how he looks in his tiny running shorts and that he was conveniently nearby when Bucky wanted fantasy material during his divorce.

Then after the microwave incident, Bucky is confused and hurt and wondering if he got everything wrong.

He decides Steve likes him, but has some kind of reason he's not acting on it, so he decides to just be charming and give Steve space to figure out whatever is going on. He's a sniper in another life. He can be patient. He also doesn't know when he's going to find the time away from their kids to kiss Steve anyway, so he's not in a rush to make a fool of himself.

But then Wanda sets them up, he's very determined to stop dancing around things at put his cards on the table so they can either move towards a romance (at whatever pace Steve needs for whatever is going on on his end that Bucky can't figure out) or Bucky can get clarification that Steve just wants to be friends.

OMG this is so damn long. But. You asked when Bucky started pursuing Steve in earnest. As much as I've written this huge long thing from the lens of Bucky's crush on Steve, Bucky is a busy guy who is trying to keep his life in order and do a good job at work, and be a good dad, etc. He reads books. He goes to the gym. He watches nature documentaries with his daughter and spends hours researching squid. He's reasonably happy and not pining endlessly away.

But probably when Bucky brings Steve the cake is the moment where Bucky is really consciously deciding that he is going to try and make something happen.