#anyway back into Repressing Stuff.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

It is truly fascinating how the common tumblr narrative around John and Paul somehow makes the guy who literally got violent multiple times over people insinuating he was queer appear more "on board with the whole gay thing" than the guy who said some awkward/dated stuff in interviews a couple of times.

[ghostie-gengar]

may or may not have had this tweet in my head while designing them

[happi-tree]

👀 your pfp is from your fae amphibia au right? i would love to know more about it <3333

Actually, my pfp is from a different Amphibia au that I haven't talked about at all on here! I've tentatively called it "the raven and the dove" and it's roughly based on the movie (the MOVIE, not the books) The School for Good and Evil and my friend @toonteller came up with a lot of it (hi, toon, hope you don't mind the tag!). If you're at all familiar with the characters from that, Anne takes Agatha's role while Marcy takes Sophie's and Sasha takes Tedros'. You don't have to be familiar with the characters at all for the au to make sense, though!

Basically, Anne and Marcy are two girls growing up in a rural village. They've been friends since they were very small, sticking close together and facing the mean-spirited remarks of their peers together. Marcy happens to stumble across a book one day that tells her of a magical place that trains the heroes and villains of fairytale stories and becomes very determined to find it, while Anne rushes along after her because she doesn't want to lose her only friend and sincerely doubts that any good could come of this. The two of them end up getting whisked away to The School For Good and Evil, where they are promptly deposited into their respective schools - Anne into the School For Good, which trains heroes, and Marcy into the School For Evil, which trains villains. And obviously this is a huge mistake, because not only does Anne want to get back to her parents, but also Marcy cannot possibly be evil! There isn't a vindictive bone in her body! The headmaster, Andrias, tells the girls that the only way to prove Marcy's innate Goodness is a true love's kiss (because villains don't get one of those in the stories, right?). They end up causing quite a stir among the students, as they are both generally disruptive and the first to enroll from outside the fairytale realm in a long time, and the shenanigans draws the attention and disapproval of one Sasha of Camelot, heir to the throne of the Storied and the School For Good's golden child. And. Well.

Quite a lot of chaos ensues in an attempt to get Marcy into the "proper" school and get Anne home, including but not limited to a Marcy corruption arc (and one for Anne, to a different extent), some identity/morality/sexuality crises on the part of Sasha, magic and shapeshifting, a slow dance (with evil overtones), gay archery lessons, ruminations on the societal expectations of beauty, attraction, gender roles, and morality, women covered in blood, true love's kiss(es), and LOTS of impractical fantasy costume changes. It's quite a bit of fun (and Sashannarcy endgame, obviously), even if I haven't thought about it in awhile! :DDD

[robinsnest2111]

idly wondering with what experts would diagnose me if I was 100% truthful and could remember every single thing that happened to me and every single quirk I developed because of it <3

[sparring-spirals]

once again using this critical role fandom blog to give effusive praise for something non CR and this time its specifically about A League Of Their Own which is phenomenal on MANY levels and multifaceted and also just so goddamn queer i can't stand it. its great. thats it.

[deus-and-the-machina]

I havent really been into the current state of the JJK manga for a while, im at the point where its ending might hold some value for me as someone who was already invested in the characters but largely aside from seeing how a few things pan out I just really really couldn't care less. 

that being said I have to thank gege for every new chapter giving us more and more good looking Gojos. the more feral and covered in blood the better, and hoo boy am I getting that.

[wellnoe]

tbh i think in looking at xavier’s relationship w scott some people find it very easy to swing into caricature. despite charles being a whole and coherent character.

[4arconinoma]

I need to be autistic about Diamond is Unbreakable again its been too long Did you know that i love Jojos biarre adventure part four diamond is unbreakable did you know that about me did you know that

[thethingything]

slowly realising that I desperately need to be able to talk about certain things that happened this year instead of bottling them up, but once again we don't want to just dump all that on the people around us and we don't have a therapist we can talk to about it

[stayathome-ts]

Alright. Guess it’s time to cowboy up.

[chibelial]

Alright fellas wish me luck in actually sleeping through the night for once

[sunderwight]

SVSSS "no Abyss" fluff AU where Shen Qingqiu just keeps accidentally proposing to a full grown disciple Luo Binghe in ways that don't register to him, but do register to Binghe, but Binghe also knows that his Shizun is clueless and doesn't actually mean it, so he's trapped in a hell of constantly getting what he desires most and fighting the urge to take advantage of the situation in order to actually claim it.

For instance, it turns out that PIDW has a knock-off version of Valentine's Day thanks to one really ill-planned VIP chapter. Shen Qingqiu found that one so egregious even he mostly scrubbed it from his mental records, but the long and short of it is that in the PIDW chocolate exists, but it's a symbolic treat that is only meant to be given to someone you intend to marry.

Of course, Shen Qingqiu discovers chocolate in PIDW and IMMEDIATELY hands it over to Luo Binghe, because he wants to see how Binghe's magnificent cooking skills can utilize this ingredient. Also he wants bon bons and this seems like the only way he's gonna get any in this lifetime.

Naturally, Binghe does make delicious bon bons, all the while fighting down the urge to be like "you proposed so we're getting married now, no take backs!"

Shizun eats the chocolates and Binghe counts slowly backwards from ten and reminds himself that getting what he wants by way of trickery would ultimately deny him what he wants most, which is for Shen Qingqiu to choose him of his own volition.

And of course, this shit just keeps happening. Somehow Shen Qingqiu keeps "forgetting" (read: subconsciously repressing) the little details about various proposal customs in PIDW (of which there are A LOT thanks to all the wife acquisitions) and proposing to Binghe almost constantly. This part of the world has a special ritual proposal wine? Better give some to Binghe! This demonic cult requires one to present a specific monster kill to their intended? Shen Qingqiu just so happened to kill one such monster himself and now he's given it over to Binghe to claim the parts (Binghe's cultivation would make better use of them!) They're visiting a neighboring sect where couples traditionally tie their wrists together with a particular type of rope as a symbol of engagement? Somehow, someway, Shen Qingqiu is going to find a good reason to tie himself to Binghe with the betrothal rope.

Not only is this dance giving Luo Binghe intense mixed feelings, and causing him to lie awake at night trying to figure out if Shen Qingqiu somehow does actually know what he's doing, and wants Binghe to bamboozle him into a marriage (or is that just wishful thinking??), it also causes him ever-more stress whenever SQQ goes on a mission with anyone else.

Especially Liu Qingge.

What if he does the clueless not-proposing to Liu Qingge? What if Liu Qingge proves to be less strong-willed than Luo Binghe (absolutely possible) and "accepts"? What if he's stupid enough to not figure out that Shen Qingqiu is a clueless idiot, and thinks it's genuine?

Shizun might marry him just to avoid having an awkward conversation!

Anyway things come to a head when finally, for once, Luo Binghe is the one who does the accidental proposal. And this time Shen Qingqiu does notice, and he gets all flustered and scolds Binghe to "be more careful" and "not waste such gestures on this old master, or anyone Binghe doesn't want taking advantage!" and Luo Binghe, who has aged one thousand decades in the past few years, still nobly resists the urge to lay out all the times Shizun has made this exact same "mistake" towards him and instead just confesses. Shoots his shot. Now or never!

He almost immediately regrets it because he had a whole plan for how to slowly ease Shizun into the idea over the course of several years, and he's prepared to be rejected now that he's fucked that up. Because he knows his master is delicate about stuff like this. Why else would he be so atypically obtuse?

But, well. Shen Qingqiu always said that the most realistic thing about the harem was that no one in their right mind would turn down a marriage proposal from Luo Binghe.

So he just, uh, says yes?

Binghe's like, you mean this whole time all I had to do was be the one to ask?!

But also he's really too happy to give a shit about the particulars either. They will have a beautiful wedding! No take backs. If SQQ gets cold feet then Luo Binghe has a list and compiled evidence of fifty million marriage proposals from him, so now he definitely has to follow through!

[roach-works]

ok im waffling on about fallout instead of having breakfast but i saw a criticism of how the prisoners were treated that's stuck with me.

spoilers!

so i think the criticism wasn't incorrect, per se: it condemned the way the show portrayed the vault dweller's naive intention to rehabilitate their murderous captives. it found fault with a common, and horrible, message that tv shows like to say, which is that carcerial violence and even the death penalty is the only effective way to deal with criminals, who are a fundamentally Bad category of human. im sick of that message too! but i think that wasn't what was going on here, actually.

so like, the vault dwellers had only ever experienced violent loss the once, and didn't really know how to cope other than denial and repression of the ordeal. but they were all hopeful and enthusiastic that their prisoners, the invaders that came to kill them all and take their stuff, could be eventually welcomed into the community as their comrades. the champions of this cause were nebbishy dorks and painfully out of touch academics. this is pretty normal for how prison reformers are portrayed, if extremely fucking annoying for those of us who ARE in favor of prison reform.

but so of course when the son of the former overseer, Norm, speaks up and suggests killing the prisoners, because why should they share resources with invaders who explicitly wanted to keep hurting them? why should they show mercy to their attackers? everyone is appalled by this suggestion. because they had to reinvent the whole concept of vengeance right then and there, because grudges and cycles of violence are anathema to a bottle society like theirs. they have been raised all their lives to forgive and forget and now, put to the test, they're recommitting to this ethos: get along, let the past go, look towards the future, believe the best of everyone.

but the prisoners die, anyway. the prisoners are killed with rat poison. and the thing is that Norm who suggested it didn't do it himself. and the prison guard who's blamed for it, even though she privately agreed with Norm that the prisoners are dangerous and unforgiveable, she didn't do it either. it's not a moment of triumphant, cathartic vengeance and it doesn't prove that there's no way to negotiate with terrorists and invaders but kill them like vermin because that's not what the message is meant to be.

the message is that norm stands there in the middle of these inconvenient prisoners, these corpses dressed in his own people's uniforms, and he looks at the new overseer. and he knows that she killed them, and she knows that he knows. she wanted him to know. this is her message and he's reading her loud and clear. and he doesn't look like a guy who's just been backed up by authority, who's just been validated in his desire for the ultimate control over those who have wronged him.

he's scared and pale and the music is ominous as fuck. and he's inside the cell, he's directly in the middle of it.

because what just happened is that he realized his entire society is being held prisoner, and the overseer is the one with the rat poison. and that he doesn't know, anymore, what freedom and safety and justice actually mean, just that he doesn't have them and he doesn't know where to find them.

that's what that scene meant. not that rehabilitative justice is a pathetic delusion of people who have no idea how to make hard choices.

but that before you advocate for killing prisoners, you might want to see how big that prison is, first.

and which side of the bars you're standing on.

[roboromantic]

hmmmmm surely there's fics out there that explore the mechanics of how their particular version of a soulmate au works, but do I wanna spend umpty-million hours digging for them? not really

[alllgator-blood]

I s2g if you add the layers of these comic pages together, it's over 350 layers. THIS is why I don't do full color for my comics lmaooo- ANYWAY EVERYONE HERE HAS AN AU APPARENTLY, SO THIS IS A BRIEF GLIMPSE INTO MINE. I don't know what to call it yet but I'm thinking of calling it "famous prophets" because 1. I like that car seat headrest song, 2. it's about shamura who is prophetic, 3. it's about trying to outrun fate with the Power of Love (and failing. Like the song!!!). It takes place when all the bishops were teens/kids during the age of hundreds of gods at war, and were trying to survive as a family.

I'm really excited to work on stuff for it but it's all gonna be drawn out of order. Maybe I'll write a full explanation of what it's gonna be about when I have a better idea...I want to channel my eldest sibling angst in a productive way, and maybe establish a QPP between shamura and a completely random npc everyone forgets about <3 also kallamar is trans too cause I said so. I'll do a comic about it eventually. Instead of an absence of gender he has TOO much gender. It simply cannot be contained.

I like that nonbinary genders are normalized in cult of the lamb to the point where nobody singles anyone out for being a they/them, it's not like "THIS IS MY SIBLING SHAMURA. THEY ARE NONBINARY AND USE THEY/THEM. ALRIGHT BACK TO KILLING YOU", it's just like "don't you fucking dare make my poor sibling wake up from their nap to kick your ass. Cause they deserve better than this."

But at the same time I like having the freedom to be more specific, and say "shamura is voidpunk and their gender is best described as the feeling that overtakes you during the first snow of the year, when everything outside is deathly quiet". This comic is actually derived from the time I was walking through a forest that's been torn down for a few years, and came out to my little sister as trans. I must've been like 13 or 14 and she didn't really get it as a 10 year old, but it was better than my mom FREAKING OUT about me coming out. So it was a nice little bonding moment between just the two of us. I don't have a good memory so I don't recall how it went unfortunately...

Now, the climate is a little different. My sis tried out transmasculinity for maybe 5-6 years before feeling happier as a woman, my mom is trying to be Based and flaunt her Woke trans children, and my dad remembered "oh yeah trans natives have existed before colonization. Maybe me being transphobic is a product of my culture being erased" and has gotten better about calling me the right thing. I have a mustache (thanks pcos!!) and wear skirts and am not a repressed "tomboy" teenager anymore. But I can't help but wonder what would've happened if I could've been like shamura and just...been nonbinary without people being fucking weird about it. Or been born as a badass war god who will tear you to shreds before you can perceive my birth sex. I know they're fictional but they are my ultimate gender envy GRRRRR BARK BARK BARK

Here is the secret image for this post- I listen to mostly EDM when I draw cause it keeps the energy up, but as I was finishing up shamura's poetry part, I was like THESE ARE JUST KMFDM LYRICS so I made this

[thesenseinnonsense]

Can you imagine when Clary or Simon figures out that Alec is just.... Living out a regency dime novel, how fucking funny that would be. Like.

Simon: No because think about it, a repressive society, an inexperienced heroine who's been forced to hide her sexuality, a rich rake who's in a local position of power---

Alec: I'm also in a position of power!

Simon: Yeah, some heroines are like, duchesses and stuff too, but they don't have any real power due to the crippling weight of societal expectations---

Alec: I'm going to kill you.

Simon: but anyway, the rake who's known for throwing these like, elaborate balls, who's closed his heart off to love---NO WAIT. MAGNUS IS MISTER DARCY. Like "I'm ignoring the inferiority of your birth" but instead of classism it's that your parents were magical Nazis.

Clary: You know, I think Magnus is more of a Bingley, I'm pretty sure he was into Alec from like, Day 1.

Simon: Have you seen Mr. Darcy? No way that man was not thirsting after our girl Elizabeth Bennet from like, the first time she sasses him back.

Clary: No, but hold on, I think Jane fits way better, the one who has all of their parents expectations on her to marry well, I mean, Elizabeth is more like Izzy or Jace if anything, like fuck the rules, stick it to the man vibes.

Simon: you realize. This makes YOU Mr. Darcy.

Clary: ...

Clary: Let's go back to Alec being a regency dime novel heroine.

Alec: I hate both of you.

Simon: Honestly, half of it is just how great of a dime novel hero Magnus makes. Like he's rakish and rich, and looks like he'd pull off a cravat. And he's always talking about how much he wants to "ravish" Alec. But their entire love story fits the plot honestly. Hero introduces heroine to the world of desire and passion, and heroine has to choose between the life she's always wanted for herself, or this sexy man with rippling abs who society doesn't want her to have.

Alec: talk about Magnus's body again and I'll find a stake and use you as a wall decoration.

Simon: ...I guess he's a little more violent than most regency heroines but there are variations to the genre.