#big fan of bodily autonomy. personally.

[simmyfrobby]

“what I got,” Silas Denver Melvin

for @songsandswords​ 

Hockey Poetry Post 15/?

(Photo credit: Claus Andersen, Rocky W. Widner, Mark Blinch, Claus Andersen, Bill Wippert, Claus Andersen, Bill Wippert, Bill Wippert, Jared Silber, Len Redkoles, Jared Silber, Andy Devlin, Bill Wippert, Joshua Bessex, Joshua Bessex)

[brsb4hls]

Right, didn't want to get into the Gaiman discussion, because hornets nest (seriously so many heinous, disturbing takes on here) and I never cared about the guy, but there's one thing I do care about.

Before I briefly get into this I do wish the women who had hurtful experiences with him that they can heal and aren't subjected to too much shit on social media for speaking up.

No matter what Gaiman actually did or didn't do, they obviously had awful encounters with him and are allowed to work through that.

Now for the one point:

I keep seeing the take people should have known Gaiman was a creep because of his works.

And while it might in this case be true that his personal fetishes, biases and 'morals' could have influenced his writing or flowed into it, that's not always the case.

And I fear a generalisation might be harmful for art discourse.

Challenging and uncomfortable art can be created by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons.

And it is important to have variety. Everybody is influenced differently by art and needs different pieces to experience something, reflect something or work through something.

Especially feminist artists tend create seemingly disturbing work, since women are often subjected to sexual, physical and psychological violence and have taken their agency and bodily autonomy from them and to make that visible, drastic imagery is used.

So to say artists who create 'disturbing' art are all creeps is a harmful take to get from this whole ordeal.

I want to seperate that part from the discourse.

This is simply about the generalisation btw, I do not want to discuss Gaiman's psyche based on his work. He might be a sad exception to the rule. I don't know.

To me personally his vibes were always off because he seemed arrogant and self absorbed and was a dick to fans about a queer reading of good omens. Until he pretended to care but actually mocked fans with his work. Big yikes there, but irrelevant regarding the big picture.

[hxhhasmysoul]

Hello, hello, have you seen the newest update of JJK? I'm so proud of my best boy, Yuuji....

Can, I ask, why do you think Yuuji is one of the character that is so underated in JJK? He is the mc, but many people (in fandom) treat him like a side character? At first, I don't think so, but I love many shounen, and somehow Yuuji is one of the mc that is underated in their own story....

Sorry if I'm wrong, just I love Yuuji and want him to get the spotlight he deserve....

Sorry it took me so fucking long to reply to this.

If you think that the story doesn’t focus on him enough then I don’t really agree with that but I don’t think it’s wrong of you to feel like that. But I’m not sure this is even what you meant, I just wanted to move this out of the way. And the following paragraphs will explain that a bit. That will be the nice part of this reply.

JJK isn’t a story that mainly follows one character and the plot happens only where that character is. For example, as much as I watched of Demon Slayer (I think up to season 3 and I have no interest in picking it up again ) or read of the Chainsaw Man (first part, I got bored a few chapters into the second), made me think that those stories are too focused on one character. Villains did villain things on the side but the story always came back to the main character and focused on him in the end and plot usually happened where he happened to be, and he was the one to kill the bosses. In JJK even if the story lines feed into each other, they have much more independence and it doesn’t feel that Yuuji is the centre of the universe and the story just waits for him to move. And my personal preference is for the JJK kind of story, as I said CSM and Demon Slayer didn’t manage to hold my interest. 

It’s just a matter of preference. And If you’d like the story to be more streamlined around him there’s nothing wrong with that.

That being said, I think that the JJK story still strongly centres around Yuuji. 

He’s connected to all the most memorable and important villains of his time (aka those that didn’t die before he became a sorcerer). He’s one of the linchpins of Kenjaku’s plan and the only one of their experiments that they seem attached to, he’s Mahito’s obsession, he’s Sukuna’s nightmare and now also obsession. 

Yuuji is also strongly connected to all the major JJK themes: weakness vs strength, human connection vs loneliness, the value of life, bodily autonomy, humanity vs dehumanisation, oppressive systems of power, tradition, gender stereotypes, drive and agency, jujutsu world vs the normie world, family, love and friendship, new vs old. 

I think only Kenjaku also really connects to all of these to the same degree as Yuuji does, though some of the other characters are close like Sukuna, Maki or Megumi. Gojou or Nobara aren’t that strongly connected to some of them. And characters like Getou or Yuuta are even more tangentially connected to some of them or not at all. Yuuji really is the one who brings it all together. 

Here ends the nice part of this answer. Everything that follows will be rather bitter and unkind towards the JJK fandom. Because I’m really fed up with it as a larger group.

__________________________________

__________________________________

So why does the fandom treat Yuuji like shit? There are a few reasons that can be pointed to and they apply to varying degrees to the behaviour of individual fans.

__________________________________

Part 1 - This fandom is the fucking pits

The fandom in itself is absolute fucking garbage. Like interacting with it will make you lose faith in humanity and give you brain damage.

Casual fans 

JJK is a fairly popular title in the west and the fandom is quite big and loud. It’s an ongoing title with a hype anime and there are a lot of casual fans. It’s full of:

People who also like many other things and don’t really follow the story closely and don’t really know the lore. 

People who read/watched JJK once and haven’t really taken the time to understand the story and its world. 

People who as @/cursedvibes says have issues with object permanence and don’t remember what happened a few chapters earlier, and who feel that if the character isn’t in the frame that means that they are dead and/or forgotten and/or were always irrelevant. 

People who don’t really like stories like JJK but have never understood the idea of saying “this is not for me” and moving on. Instead they take it as a personal offence that this popular title doesn’t cater to their specific tastes. And they often have the delusion that their personal taste is the mark of objective quality. 

People who only want flashy fights and/or power scaling. 

A lot of these people feel that they need to shit out content about JJK on social media because that’ll get them into the trending tags. And since they don’t really have any opinions of their own apart from not being satisfied with JJK they find some cold take that sounds clever to them and regurgitate it over and over again until a new clever-sounding cold take becomes popular, rinse repeat. 

Those people should be ignored, blocked or muted. They’re just riding some pathetic bandwagon and clout chasing.

___

Righteous Haters 

The cold takes the casual fans regurgitate usually come from people who just thrive on criticising popular things. Those divide into:

The “Intellectuals” who think they are better than the plebs who like popular things. In their mind popular things can do nothing right and are by default shallow and stupid.

The “Enlightened” who will jump at any opportunity to call something problematic and emerge as the morally pure person.

It’s hard to tell whether these people actually read the story and know it well. Their takes are usually very divorced from the text and I’m always on the fence whether it’s due to genuine lack of reading comprehension or willful misinterpretation. 

If you engage with these people they will argue with fucking manga panels, like they will not accept the text even if it’s presented to them. They are honestly a joke. But a lot of them will die on the hill of discrediting Yuuji and spread that opinion around wrapped in pseudointellectual language. Some of them will even put on the airs of academia without knowing how to academia a text in any of the many possible academic analysis ways. Or how to academia about social issues. It’s an intimidation tactic that makes me disrespect them.

Among the JJK enlightened you will find a lot of terfy pseudo feminism. It will be very conservative flavoured and really misogynistic, usually not overtly queerphobic but the vibe will be there, and it will aggressively bring up the general fandom opinion that Gege is a man (which may even be true but Gege doesn’t officially gender themself) to attack and discredit Gege and their work, according to the terfy belief that all men are dangerous and evil. There will also be a lot of intellectualised transphobia especially in relation to Kenjaku, but also Uraume, Tengen and Kirara. And all so funny homophobia about how in their opinion Gege is attracted to their male characters.

___

The thirsters

JJK surprisingly aggressively caters to the female and queer gaze in ways that most shounen just don’t. I once wanted to make a joke post titled “The Masculine Forearm, the true main character of JJK” just consisting of panel after panel that is angled in such a way to put the skillfully drawn male hands and strong forearms front and centre. (The masculine hand and forearm are often mentioned in relation to the female gaze.)

I gave up, there’s just too many of those, simply look at the covers. It’s really funny because Gege does not hide the forearms of Yuuji or Megumi, but at least in the earlier manga that I analysed from that perspective, the forearm angles of those two are much tamer than for example when Sukuna or Nanami are shown. It almost feels like Gege knows or subconsciously senses that the forearm is thirst, is fanservice, and Gege is very consistent about not sexualising the teenage girls and likely also the boys. 

The forearm is of course the tip of the fanservice iceberg. Everything about the JJK men is very that to the point that JJK is widely known for its sexymen. There are people, including fan creators, in the fandom who have never read or watched JJK, they just learned of the sexymen thirsted hard enough to join the fandom.

These are the people who usually won’t actively attack Yuuji, they will just flood the fandom with the posts about their favs and make it seem that few people care for Yuuji. 

There are also Yuuji thirsters but there aren't that many of them. 

Yuuji is 15 years old in canon and some people just draw a line at thirsting over a character that is underage in canon. And as long as they don’t insult or harass others about that I don’t give a shit what they do. 

But also even if Yuuji was of age, Yuuji is not a prime thirst object. He’s for a slightly more refined palette. And he becomes more desirable if you understand his character better. 

On the surface Yuuji is a himbo, a dumb jock with a heart of gold and a cute face. There’s no mystique to him, no edge. This view of him is very widespread. For some thirsters that is enough but it’s not a popular thirst worthy type.

There are some thirsters who actually know the source material and know who Yuuji is but those are people who are in the JJK fandom for more than just thirst. 

Generally I don’t have a problem with thirsters but the more ignorant ones contribute to the general fandom idea that there’s nothing interesting to Yuuji.

___

Gojou and SatoSugu fans

I ranted about those people a lot and everything I’ve written about them holds up. A large and loud subset of them will spam all the tags, will create posts that boil down to “JJK is about Gojou (and Getou) actually and everything that happens in JJK is about him (them), regardless if it happens to other characters”. If you don’t actually block them on sight, wading through the main JJK tags is nigh impossible. 

Gojou really won the internets and is truly the “strongest” of the JJK sexymen. 

The overabundance of content about him exposes a lot of people to the “meta” his fans produce in droves. I put it in quotation marks because fuck, so many of these people are allergic to canon and what they write is deranged fanfiction tagged as meta or discourse. Gojou exists in the western fandom more as headcanon than canon. And to people who aren’t really invested in JJK, he seems like the main and most important character. 

There are both shippers, thirsters, casual fans and righteous haters (they hate everything about JJK but Gojou (and Getou) in this group.

And of course they influence the perception of what JJK is, including the perception of Yuuji. 

___

Sukuna fans

There are some of them who will spread takes that reduce Yuuji to Sukuna’s skin suit and will generally treat Yuuji as a function of Sukuna, not a separate character. Interestingly enough, Kusakabe is one of them but he pretends to be a Sukuna hater.

___

People who think Kusakabe speaks the truth straight from Gege’s brain

Because the reading comprehension in the fandom is very poor, there are people who take whatever Kusakabe says at face value and will ignore everything else that has happened in the manga thus far. They also haven’t picked up on the fact that Kusakabe has always been deeply biassed against Yuuji. 

Why is Kusakabe still alive? 

And honestly not only Kusakabe, to them any character that discredits Yuuji is always correct and spot on.

___

Megumi and ItaFushi, SukuFushi fans

There is a subset of those fans that despise Yuuji with a passion. They think that Megumi either should be or is the main character of JJK. They think that Sukuna has been obsessed with Megumi from the start because Megumi is special and has incredible potential. They will pretend that the main JJK storyline revolves around Megumi, they will often ignore Kenjaku completely and pretend they are not the main driver of the story. Because admitting that Kenjaku, not Sukuna was the main villain of the story, would just by itself completely discredit Megumi as the main character, because Megumi barely any connection to Kenjaku, only through Tsumiki and Yorozu, and has only a weak, practical, plot related and not thematic connection to Sukuna. He became Sukuna’s escape plan and a tool to kill Gojou.

He has no connection to any other major villains or antagonists in current day JJK. He’s only connected to Touji and Naoya, but it can be argued that Yuuji had more dealings with Naoya than Megumi. 

Yuuji’s connections to Sukuna are:

Practical - being Sukuna’s vessel and cage.

Plot related - he is Kenjaku’s way of controlling Sukuna and being Sukuna’s vessel influences everything about how Yuuji functions in the story and how he relates to other characters.

Emotional - they both harbour strong negative feelings for each other, Sukuna even more than Yuuji. 

Familial - they are related. Yuuji doesn’t know and would just likely compartmentalise it. Sukuna pretends he doesn’t care but it’s clear he cares very much actually.

Philosophical - Yuuji by merely being himself challenges Sukuna’s whole worldview. 

Thematic - strength vs weakness, sorcerer vs normie, humanity, value of human life, family, love, connection and loneliness, tradition, new vs old, bodily autonomy.

If those Megumi fans are shippers they will often push the dumb himbo stereotype on Yuuji. There are a lot of fics in the ItaFushi and FushiIta tags that will treat Yuuji as the necessary evil but you can really feel that the authors dislike him. Finding fics there from his POV or at least exploring him is a fucking chore. And that is or at least used to be the most popular ship tag for Yuuji. Pages upon pages of stereotyping or downright character assassination working hard to replace the canon Yuuji with the fanon one in the general fandom consciousness. 

__________________________________

Part 2 - People say one thing and do/think another

Basically a lot of people are not really self aware or are hypocrites or just repeat things they read and never put any thought into them.

You will see a lot of people criticising shounen tropes. That shounen is formulaic, that the shounen main characters are all the same, that shounen battles are all the same, that shounen main characters are overpowered… and so on and so forth. 

Those same people will latch onto Gojou and crown him the main character. 

Because faced with Yuuji … they have no fucking clue what to do with Yuuji. They finally got a shounen main character that at first glance might seem like the same old shounen main but very quickly it becomes clear he absolutely isn’t that. 

So there are three reactions to that.

Denial

No, Yuuji actually is a stereotypical shounen main. He’s got colourful hair, he’s strong, he fights with his fist, he’s super dumb and kind of a pervert but nice and everyone instantly loves him. He gets power ups and learns everything too easily and too quickly, fights the bosses and breaks the story. And of course he has a sob story and is related to the villain. And his mum has a braid.. She doesn’t, well she does have a ponytail, kinda, in two of her bodies anyway…

And that’s it, there’s all there is to him, there’s nothing more to see. 

Faced with canon they will reject all arguments or block you.

___

Rage

Yuuji is so fucking weak, why is he so weak? Why are there other characters in this story that get focus? Why is everyone more powerful than him? Why doesn’t he power up and destroy all the bosses, what kind of fucking shit is this? Well at least there’s Gojou the fucking GOAT, let’s go the strongest!!! 

Gojou died? Why? Didn’t he say he was the strongest? Why the fuck is Yuuji there? What can he even do? He wasn’t powering up and bodying opponents so we didn’t really pay attention to whatever was happening with him. This is some fucking ass pull.

They also can’t accept that the final battle isn’t a one vs one, that there’s actually a plan with many aspects and contingencies. That the characters are trying to be rational about this thing, they aren’t driven by their egos and desire for glory, well apart from two, and they just want to do everything they can to get rid of Sukuna and stop Kenjaku.

This is not acceptable. If it’s not hard hits and energy flashes but plans and strategy then it’s not a real shounen fight. Gojou vs Sukuna was kinda a fight like that, of course Sukuna was not doing it right because he was scheming too much. But it should’ve ended there, Gojou’s energy balls should’ve concluded the manga.

If you try to suggest to them that he’s just a different kind of character and JJK isn’t that kind of shounen and that it's actually okay for it to take a different route, the rage will spill. They will not accept that shounen can be many things but they will complain that all shounens are the same and predictable. 

___

Condescension 

Yuuji isn’t what they want him to be and that’s “objectively” bad writing. That’s it. They will actually list how Yuuji should’ve been written but more importantly how everything should’ve been written and generally Yuuji should’ve never been put forward as the main character because he really doesn’t make sense as one. Gege is just a bad writer and it’s all mid and doesn’t make sense. 

What’s even the point? Is there even a story in JJK, what is it even about? The magic system surely doesn’t make any sense, who even understands that? Everyone who says they understand is lying.

Sure, there were some interesting parts in it, so people got hyped, like the Hidden Inventory arc and Shibuya but only until Gojou got sealed, everything after that is just boring and awful and did I mention bad writing? 

And all those deaths of fandom sweethearts, pointless. Either they are just for shock value because there was nothing absolutely nothing in the writing that suggested that they might die, od Gege just being mean to the fandom and hating their own characters and Gege should honestly *insert violent ideation*. Or the deaths are too predictable, generally everything is so predictable in JJK, and stereotypical. 

Why do people even care or like it, they are objectively wrong if they do. Because hello the writing is so fucking bad, people have no fucking taste honestly. Who even reads that shit anymore?

Why are those people still in the fandom? Fuck knows.. They will spam the tags though, incessantly. The world must know how much they are better than JJK, Gege and those losers who have anything positive to say about JJK.

___

Honestly there is no winning with any of these people. What they claim they want is not what they are ready to embrace or even tolerate. They can’t also accept that maybe JJK just isn’t for them. There must be something wrong with JJK and with Gege because their tastes are universal and objective. 

__________________________________

Part 3 - JJK may be a shounen but Yuuji is a shoujo main character

I’ve written about it before (some of it is a bit outdated now due to what was revealed in the manga) but I will always stand by this. Because it really explains everything. 

Yuuji isn’t a typical shounen protagonist but if you look at shoujo protagonists you’ll see his type of protagonist. He is of course a mix of both and in the recent chapters he’s leaning a little more shounen but not too much.

He’s not indulging Sukuna, look how little he even speaks in this fight. He’s not revelling in this fight like Gojou had because he’s not fighting for himself. The outcome, not the fight matters. He’s still not ego driven, still two of his win conditions apart from his fighting abilities are his personality and strength of convictions that so deeply unsettle and upset Sukuna. 

Recently everyone in the story, apart from Chousou, Higuruma and Toudou puts Yuuji down, discredits all his accomplishments. He even is starting to believe it. Sukuna is continuing to take everyone away from him. And yet Yuuji is still fighting because this is not about his ego. This is about removing the threat that is Sukuna and hopefully saving Megumi. He really puts himself last and isn’t even given the space to feel bad. All of this will just be there to crush him later.

And the fandom just takes every single insult hurled at Yuuji by the other characters at face value, as if the jujutsu world hasn’t always been hostile to him, treated him as less than human. As if those characters were impartial and haven’t been showing their bias towards Yuuji. They don't pick up on the fact that the jujutsu world is rotten to its core and Gege has consistently used the story to question the values of that world.

So lastly the fandom can’t stomach that Yuuji isn’t 100% stereotypically masculine, that his arc isn’t an alpha male power fantasy. That he isn’t written to perfectly embody the conservative gender norms. This is what the weakness accusation is all about, even if the people hurling it would swear up and down that they aren’t misogynists. Because Yuuji isn’t only accused of losing but also of crying, of breaking down, of being scared. This slight proximity to what is considered stereotypically feminine is a vice. One that for many discredits him completely, makes him not worthy of being the main character. 

And if you think that I’m reaching with this… It’s a pattern that repeats itself in the fandom. You will see criticism of the JJK girls for not being soft enough, girly enough. Any proximity for masculinity will be zeroed in on and criticised under the guise of “feminism” with the terfy sentiment that female characters can’t be girly anymore. But girly characters like Hana or Yorozu will be hated for their proximity to stereotypical femininity because that’s considered feeble and shallow and unworthy. And just look how the fandom reacted to Megumi having an ugly and hysterical mental breakdown. To him showing weakness and not manning up. To him showing his emotions in such a visceral way. 

____

These are the three main reasons why I think Yuuji is so underrated and why so many people will go to great lengths to just shit on him.

[mychlapci]

If we are going to discuss TFP Bulkhead let's think about post-War all the ex-Decepticons Vehicons being absolutely horny for their foreman. Going to be very, very dubcon (at best). Sorry it got a bot outta hand.

He's a boss but more along the lines of Breakdown who doesn't hit and treats them nicely and knows their names. He even starts to become friendly and knows their names. Everytime he bends over and has to come pick up something heavy, production stalls.

Most accidents are due to eyeballing him. He once got hot working and took off his chest plate casually as it is common with Construction bots to prevent overheating and they all got an eyeful of Bulkhead titties and a ten car pileup happened. Mommy Bulkhead kinks were born that day.

He is just surrounded by lusting Vehicons and one day they can't stand it, after he gets a little tipsy. He complains about how hard it is to find a partner mentioning everyone expects a big strong Wrecker and see him and how he'd like to be the one taken care of a bit you know. Like a hundred engines start growling at the thought and one of them says they could and Bulkhead laughs saying it's fine thinking they are joking. But then they all start complimenting him drunkenly and he blushes, waving off the “You're great boss!” “Anyone would be lucky to have you!” “So pretty!” and goes home but they are all plotting now.

The Vehicons all start a group effort of hitting on him and flirting and little gifts because that's how Autobots convey interest right? Completely goes over his head. Then they decide to do it the way things went on the Nemesis.

Bulkhead gets lured into a construction area below the surface and tries to help by clearing an area out and goes to walk through but the doors of the subterranean temple to one of the Primes shuts down and neatly cinches around his face. He curses but starts directing his team how to get out but things are weirdly quiet and then he feels a hand on his modesty plate. He bulks and then his lead assistant who is now rubbing against it explains that they all deeply care for him and want to show their appreciation and since the Autobot way didn't work they'll try something else.

Bulkhead finds out his comm connection doesn't work and though he struggles doesn't want to hurt them and tries to say why they can't do this because he's talked with them a lot and Decepticons have a really messed up idea of bodily autonomy and consent especially Vehicons who even he, guiltily, genuine thought were more drone than person for a long time.

They all assure him not to worry they'd never hurt him and keep touching him exactly, exactly, how he likes so his protests are interrupted by him moaning as he is getting hot and his vents opening up, fans turning on and getting wet behind the panel. He is suddenly deeply regretting all those interface stories he shared when they were relaxing together after hours. Even worse are the compliments both about his frame and himself that are just so sincere.

He can't stop it and his panel pops.

Things quickly escalate. That split face and long tongue from the zombie/Vampire episode? That's just how Vehicons feed. Soon Bulkhead has one eating him out the tentacle tongue going deeper than it should be able to while one is eagerly deep throating him tongue wrapping around and stroking his spike. He overloads and that's just the beginning.

There's a train of them eager to lick and suck and fuck him. The entire time he has to listen to how pretty his pussy he is how kind and sweet he is how they all just want to worship him and their fields are just a whirl stream of lust and admiration that is tripping him up over and over. The train just keeps going and going. He never gets a moment to feel empty because one replaces the next immediately and when his spike eventually recesses they gently lube that up with fingers and tongues and then his spike casing is being fucked as well which makes him overload even harded because they are small enough to not damage him.

Eventually his charge and fuel levels start to dip but they have a plan for that. Turns out the room isn't as locked down as he thought and some slip in here as they all take a break to massage him, oil his joints, squirt lube generously in all his holes and refuel him while he is dazed he barely reacts until he's getting kissed and that tongue is fucking his intake and his chest plate is getting removed. They give him Energon, engex, hand feed him sweets, and polish him as quite a few also have caretaking kinks.

(And the healthiest Decepticon relationship they are trying to mirror is KOBD.)

When they restart it is from the front and back. Kissing turns into fucking and someone is always sucking, squeezing or fucking in between his boobs and before he knows it he can't even count how many are going at once in his spike, valve, throat, aft, and boobs and he feels like he's stuck in a constant overload interrupted by "so pretty” “our beautiful big boss” “you can take so much so sweet”.

Bulkhead genuinely doesn't know when it ends but he wakes up in his bed fully recharged, body clean with no marks, no transfluid in any hole, but wet behind his panels. There's a message saying he got “overcharged” at the celebration and they tucked him in. The other Autobots comment about the party the Vehicons had.

Bulkhead thinks he dreamed it because everyone is so normal the next day, just warm and friendly, following orders and calling him boss. It makes him twitchy and nervous. He goes down to the Temple and finds they've cleared out the area and started repairs. No sign of him being pinned down there.

He thinks he's going a bit crazy because now he can't stop thinking about it and is horny constantly and conflicted and starts intentionally doing things like bending over or taking off his chest plate and stretching.

Then when he's accepted that it was just his overactive imagination his second comes up to his office leans into his personal space and just gently strokes up his arm pressing a field that feels just like Bulkhead's “dream” and says that the Vehicons are wanting to have a celebration in their barracks and they want Bulkhead there as the centerpiece. It's an invitation and Bulkhead freezes up before saying “of course” and shows up skittish and unsure. Everyone keeps touching him but keeping it PG as he is given drinks and lingering touches and he thinks maybe he imagined it. Then he gets lead into their “recreation area” and they've set up a massive frame with straps and padding designed to fit him.

Bulkhead takes a shot and says “yes”.

makes animal sounds at this because i'm fucking. speechless. Something about Bulkhead being extremely desirable for his size just does it for me. 

The vehicons working under him love Bulkhead. He doesn't scream at them, he doesn't hit them, and he's perfectly built (Bulkhead big naturals will now live in my head forever.) Vehicons being unaware of how to approach the subject of absolutely getting to ruin his holes one by one, they try to mimic autobot courting methods but that just doesn't work on Bulkhead. Getting to pin him down seems like a more efficient method. He's a strong guy, but a fucked up vehicon tongue up his pussy makes him fold so fast… 

Poor Bulkhead gaslit into thinking he just had an extremely vivid wet dream until he ends up down there again and now the room is nicely decorated and the vehicons promise to take care of him… I'll be completely honest with you, I want Bulkhead in a sex swing. I've decided that's going to be my fantasy for tonight. I want him helpless and strung up with vehicons pushing their spikes into his valve over and over again until he can barely feel his calipers…

[lakesbian]

Hey, I've got a question. For some context I'm a big fan of your analysis and finally started writing my own wormfic (not gonna link it here because that feels a little self-promote-y for my tastes). I flubbed the first chapter wrt writing Taylor perfectly, but I managed to course-correct for the 2nd one. Anyways, while he's not in the story yet, I fully intend to write Alec as well as I can. I'm pretty sure I've got him for 99% of the story, but you've sometimes asked for more asks about alec, and there's one question relevant to the story that I'm not at all confident I can answer:

In my fic Taylor's a vampire for complicated reasons, she's basically being reanimated by a giant bug replacing her organs that gives her a bunch of blood magic and weird, extremely edgy superpowers. Like if Vampire: The Masquerade was an anime. In exchange she has to deal with all the generic vampire weaknesses, a fear of sunlight and fire, and the parasite's instincts.

Idk if Alec will even have a chance to become a vampire, but in case it ever comes up, do you think he'd go for it? Most of his exposure to it will be Taylor being weird and emo about it, then Lisa getting turned and pretending everything is Fine and Normal to make Taylor chill out.

thank you for enjoying My Posting. i think if presented with the ability to be a cool vampire that gives him Prestigious Fancy Boy points and makes him Bad Ass and everyone else was doing it he would be like yeah sure. but if the vampirism in question is "all of your organs get replaced with a giant bug and you can't go get mcdonalds during the daytime or eat anything with garlic in it even if it smells really good" then he would, presumably, as a normal person who doesn't think having his organs replaced by a giant bug is very fun, not be keen on the idea at all. mr trauma surrounding bodily autonomy who gets freaked out about the idea of taylor's spiders in his house and home does not want a giant bug reanimating him. and replacing his organs. furthermore i think it would creep him out slash upset him a nonzero amount if multiple of his teammates had their organs replaced by giant bugs, even if they were otherwise acting normally. he would be capable of rolling with it as he does but some of the discomfort would probably shine through at first through jokes revealing his anxieties on the matter. or he might even outright question how much they're still Them versus Regent-Bugs Acting With His Friends Corpses. mild perturbation at minimum about the bugs reanimating his friends corpses. but he would roll with it. due to being alec

[offbrandtoaster]

I think part of the reason Persona 3 is my favorite, despite the plotholes in the original, is that it doesn't constantly undermine it's whole theme and message.

Death is inevitable but life is beautiful.

Person a 4 and 5 on the other hand suffer constant tonal issues with their core messages.

4 really drives home the be true to yourself message, but it always pulls back before said true self is a problem to society. Doesn't help that Yosuke makes homophobic jokes in P4 media to this day. So like, be true to yourself but also don't be gay. A

nd before anyone says the cut gay Yosuke stuff, that genuinely is irrelevant considering it was removed and is non-canon, and because of how Social Links don't effect the main story at all, Yosuke would STILL be like "Kill yourself fag" even it WERE canon. Be true to yourself... just not too much you know?

Persona 5 isn't quuuuite as bad, but it has its issues. I think everyone besides like, Joker and Ryuji being some super star in some manner feels a little contradictory to the message, but whatever it's not a big deal.

But then you have how the game treats Ann. Literally the arc right her's has her needing to put herself in an uncomfortable situation regarding her bodily autonomy. And like... it leaves a SUPER sour taste in the mouth after Kamishido's Dungeon. There's also the fact Joker is also able to date adult women. And like I personally don't give a shit what a game does or does not allow you to do, but it directly undermines Kamishido's dungeon, and so the whole dungeon just feels insincere.

I don't know. I don't hate 4 or 5. I ADORED 4 as a teen, and Kanji being ambiguously bi back then was super important to me (newer fans may not know, but they intentionally used ambiguous language back then. The Golden made sure to No Homo the fuck out of Kanji though lol.) But they just undermine their main narrative so hard that it's frustrating when I replay them (again. Mostly 4, as I haven't played Royal.)

Making most of the main characters' character growth be in Social Links shot themselves in the foot. In 3 the characters grow in the main narrative, and so it just feels nicer despite the more glaring plotholes.

[djsherriff-responses]

I’m attempting an actual set up/timeline of sorts for Captain Laserhen and wanted to share what I’ve written down so far

I appreciate opinions and criticism if you’re comfortable reading about an au involving themes of Eugenics, unethical practices that go against people’s bodily autonomy and consent , male pregnancy, abuse and general fears regarding pregnancy, parenthood and how that can change someone

You see Eden, the big fans of eugenics that they are , don’t feel it’s enough to simply scan through their civilian population and hunt down those with “worthy” genetics for their various military programs: They want a way to manufacture super soldiers personally

Cloning seems like an obvious choice and cloning technology is something they have access to. But it takes so many resources just to create and maintain one clone through its development , never mind all the mutations and amount of failures that could happen during the cloning process, and then there’s the issue of this information getting out to the press and the controversy it’d cause

But most importantly, clones are essentially dolls with a conscious, and dolls don’t have any loyalty to their owners. Sure Eden is a master at brain washing and almost perfected the art of manipulating people. But Eden already has defectors and traitors despite their best efforts to maintain control of their own civilians , who’s to say what chaos would happen if mass produced clones became part of the equation?

No , it best to keep cloning to a strict minimum of a select few. A few rogue clones is much easier to deal with then an entire trained army of rogue clones

Eden realised it’s not enough to raise children to wield guns , their soldiers need a reason to remain loyal to Eden despite the horrors and abuse, a connection to keep them tied to the system even when doubt eats at them in the dead of night

And what greater ties is there than that of blood: A family

So Eden gave their male super soldiers a sort of “retirement protocol” where they essentially have an artificial womb (don’t ask me the specifics of this it’s sci fi horror nonsense) so that when those super soldiers (ideally) aged out of the military, they’d get pregnant and pop out a replacement to take their place

Or if a super soldier chose to become a traitorous terrorist, Eden will have leverage to bring them back into their arms

(Dolph in this au is cis and while the Eden army is dominantly cis, there’s likely issues a trans or genderqueer character would face from this situation that simply has not crossed my cis brain, just wanted to add this tidbit here since the set up is primarily focused on cis men going through this unethical treatment)

The specific reasons why this was done to male soldiers:

Women already have wombs and the capability to produce children, so it’d be pointless all things considered

There’s a larger amount of men in the army compared to women, so obviously Eden has gotta put their resources on getting *the men pregnant* replacements for those men ready

Men who are amab aren’t expected to ever fall pregnant and thus aren’t prepared for the turmoil and stress that comes with pregnancy the ways which women are. The men would be in a vulnerable position and would seek out help by any means necessary , plus be much easier to manipulate (either through use of their new found motherly instincts or their desire to be rid of this unexpected baby)

Most importantly,men do not have the means to have a natural birth. This is the most crucial part as the way Eden has done it, the men will have no choice but to seek medical attention to have a c section when the baby is due and thus even if that man does not want to return to Eden, Eden will still have the means to find him anyways

“But what about the press/public learning about this?!” Oh Eden already has an answer to that: Male pregnancies are a result of a strange effect of dimension X leaking into our universe and biologically impacting Eden’s male population(which is all the more reason it’s important to keep alien scum out!)

Basically, Eden blames the aliens. Because a vulnerable pregnant man is going to be far more willing to crawl back into the system that abused him if he believes aliens are the ones making him go through the horrific process of an unnatural pregnancy, instead of the truth that Eden has purposely done unethical practices on his body to keep him on a leash 

And Dolph is one of those men that Eden unethically gave with the ability to have babies, all without his knowledge or consent, yay!

Side note, normal children are 50:50 when it comes to inheriting their parents’ genetics. But super soldier babies actually take about 75 to 85% after their “mother” (again, Eden being huge fans of eugenics and not wanting to lose such valuable genes) so any children Dolph has, regardless of the other parent, will always take more after him

The timeline of this au diverges from the canon plot as of episode two , before Dolph walks in on Alex sleeping with Pagan (so anything that happened after that doesn’t happen, most notably Jade does not die). Instead of seeing the cigarette and finding his cheating boyfriend, the smell of the smoke makes Dolph vomit and team ghost are forced to abort mission. Though technically it’s been divergent from canon before episode one even happens

[justporo]

Hello Poro :) (Rather long message incoming, sorryyyy) First off: I'd like to say a big, heartfelt Thank You <3 Ever since adult life took over, I've fallen out of love with pretty much all of my fandoms. Work and every-day-life will do that to you, I guess. But then I decided to play BG3 as my very first game, and what can I say? I've folded for a certain Pale Elf like a lawn-chair. For the first time in almost 12 years I loved a character enough to turn to fan fiction again and your writing brings so much extra life to Astarion <3 It's a joy to read your work, the fluff, the smut and the fun headcanons you come up with. I am more of a lurker than an active user but just know someone gets all giddy when you post, so I wanted to share my appreciation :)! I got a little thought for headcanon too and wanted to ask your opinion. Okay, we know that bodily autonomy, choosing what to do with your body, is the most important thing to Astarion. So how do you think he would react if he discovered that Tav never had sex before and chose him to be their first? I mean, we can be certain Astarion seduced the occasional virgin - but it was only because he had to prey on them, right? Tav *choosing* Astarion to be the first person to give their body to, tho? Because they genuinely care for him, not only because he put in the work to seduce them? I'd like to think he would not just ignore that. What do you think?

Hey, dear wonderful Anon ❤️ Apologies I let this sit for a few days, I wanted to give this message the adequate attention!

Thank you so so much ❤️ It's been very much the same for me. I haven't been active in fandoms - or here for that matter - for like a decade and then BG3 hit me like the proverbial truck and Astarion dug his claws into my heart. And it's so so nice to know people enjoy my writing. Thank you, it makes me incredibly happy to know that my ideas and stories add to this wonderful character to you!! 🥰🥹 Mwah to you, my lurking Anon!

As to your headcanon: oh I am positive he would definitely care, always. This man isn't as cold-blooded and heartless he would like everyone to think. And I would think if Tav so deliberately chose him to be their first it would absolutely throw him for a loop. Because it will make him think about how for him it's been merely transactional at best for so long and downright horrendous at worst.

Depending on when in their journey I'd think Astarion would react very differently: at first he would probably be very deflective, possibly rejecting Tav with something unrelated because he couldn't bear to treat them like that.

Later on with lots of talking Tav assuring him that they REALLY want to do this he might accept it. And if he does I'm pretty sure he'd be very thoughtful about it: not patronising Tav but taking his time so they can get used to everything and if they're up for it slowly showing and teaching them stuff.

[leikeliscomet]

Let's Talk About Thasmin

Chapter 1 - Not Something I Usually Do

Mentions of sexual assault in this chapter

It’s known and widely accepted by most queer fans that the Doctor is an undeniably queer character - but how they’re queer comes with Ts and Cs. Thirteen’s queerness or alleged lack thereof, has been a fairly big talking point in the Thasmin discourse. Some joke about her being the only straight one in the lineup. Others consider her the only actual asexual doctor, as in not having any real sexuality at all. Some even claim Thirteen is the most oblivious about sex completely due to her childish personality. With Fifteen’s explicit attraction to men in the newest episodes, some even consider this as a one-up of Thirteen’s queerness, claiming Fifteen’s the first incarnation to have a same-sex romance instead. Chibnall’s calmer approach to the Doctor’s sexuality compared to the ‘Moffatisms’ of previous doctors comes into play here. Many interesting words are used to describe this; sexless, prudish, frigid and of course, asexual (used incorrectly that is). Critiques made about Thirteen’s alleged prudishness are tied to her womanhood, in the sense that Thirteen’s lack of sexual interest was a mistake or part of Chibnall/The BBC’s misogynistic agenda to silence a woman’s sexuality. There is a slight truth in this as a now woman-Doctor going around lipsing men throughout the stars wouldn’t have been supported like her male predecessors. Women are often shamed and degraded for showing any form of explicit sexuality whether it’s through revealing clothing or having many sexual relationships. A common patriarchal myth is that women are less interested in sex than men due to biology. Men can’t help having the hunger but women, ladies, don’t do that. Thirteen being as flirtatious as Ten would've been dragged for sure. This bleeds into the desexualisation of lesbian and bisexual women too. It’s not uncommon for most adult shows to show heterosexuality in the most blatant of ways but conveniently skip out the desires of their sapphic characters. Now Doctor Who’s a 12 at the highest, but this still plays a key role in talking Thasmin. To have a long list of m/f couples, with bold declarations of love and kiss scenes to go around then show the first f/f doctor couple leaving unlipsed seems like a massive red flag. In a long list of doctor couples, why is Thasmin now the no-go? Especially as the first canon m/m doctor couple, FifteenRogue got their smooch? If previous doctors can be flirty then why can’t Thirteen? Most discussions about Thirteen’s sexuality involve the concept of a removal or repression of her identity and I understand the concerns but I wanna raise an alternative interpretation; what if Thirteen isn’t repressing her sexual attraction, she just has little to none of it?

Compulsory sexuality is the idea that sex is intrinsic to the human experience. Everyone wants to, has and will have sex. If you say you don’t you’re a liar. To lack sexual relationships and sexual attraction is unhuman, abnormal, poor physical health, poor mental health and immature. I want to specify compulsory sexuality here instead of compulsory heterosexuality or acephobia because apart from how I’ll get into comphet in Chapter 2, compulsory sexuality specifically describes the pressure of sexual participation, the erasure of consent and the removal of bodily autonomy. Plus compulsory sexuality is a force that harms everyone, regardless of sexuality and/or gender identity and we would all benefit from learning about it and fighting it. Thirteen’s not human and neither is any incarnation of this Time Lord but they all look like one, so this expectation is constantly made of them regardless (which could be a whole other essay in itself). A large chunk of the queerbaiting allegations aimed at Thirteen specifically are due to her little sexual attraction towards Yaz, which not only is seen as proof that she only doesn't share her feelings but that this means Thirteen isn’t even queer. In Eve of the Daleks, it’s confirmed Dan knows Thirteen likes Yaz but she denies it. In Legend of the Sea Devils, Thirteen confirms she likes Yaz but can’t promise a long-term relationship with her because of her unstable time-travelling life. How Thirteen’s feelings were handled is up for debate in terms of writing quality but regardless, it is confirmed she shares Yaz’s romantic feelings in return. So why doesn’t the Doctor Who fandom believe her? Some fans have been bold in claiming Thirteen is sexless and frigid but is this even true? Well no actually. She makes a few sex jokes in the era such as the ‘You’re not filling me!’ comment to the Morax in The Witchfinders. There’s Hyph3n with a 3 assuming what she pulled out of Ryan was recreational in Orphan 55. That episode also starts with Thirteen apologising for not knowing the octopus-style aliens were in their mating season. She even flirts with Yaz directly in LOTSD, even if it’s late in her era. She’s aware but doesn’t care. The ‘unofficially asexual’ approach to Thirteen isn’t exclusive to her either. Nine’s simple ‘No’ to Jackie and Twelve’s confusion as to why Dr Chang would wanna see nudity in a swimming pool show this isn’t the first time the Doctor’s been disinterested in sex and sexual things. Plus throughout Classic Who, many OG Doctors seemed uninterested or unaware of the advances made towards them. They were surrounded by beautiful women probably! So why is Thirteen uniquely weird for doing this? Why are the men in the lineup asexual but this woman is frigid?

Not only is Thirteen fake queer but she’s also fake woman. In a society of desexualisation that shuns women for expressing sexuality, a woman as the lead with no obvious sexual desire seems like a threat or reinforcement of that standard to non-asexual women. If patriarchy wants women to be non-sexual, then the non-sexual woman looks like she’s a product of that, despite the various reasons why she might be that way through choice, nature or both. And also despite the fact women are expected to be sexual in specific contexts like sexual reproduction and the sexual pleasure of cis heterosexual men. The patriarchy doesn’t reward non-sexual women regardless. Even if Thirteen was fully sexless with no sex jokes in sight that would be a morally neutral thing, but to fandom, it’s inherently bad. A frigid woman in a society that believes in the sexual entitlement to women’s bodies is inherently bad. The fandom can only imagine the Doctor’s little to no sexual attraction because they are repressed, sanitised or restricted but never asexual. The days of ‘no hanky panky in the TARDIS’ have been left behind, but it’s still blamed for the frigidity of this modern doctor. The only way Thirteen could have little to no sexual attraction is due to a barrier instead of her having a fully autonomous asexuality. This isn’t just a Doctor Who fan issue. It’s a human issue, to be honest.

[SA mentioned in this paragraph] Compulsory sexuality additionally blurs the lines of consent. In this rhetoric, any and all sexual interaction is seen as better than having none at all because the quota of human sexuality has been met. Thirteen and the Chibnall era as a whole have been joked about for failing to live up to the hornier days of RTD1 and the Moffat era. With FifteenRogue on the scene, there’s been praise for ‘ending the drought’ of the lacking kiss scenes and touching of Chibnall Who. A return to the ‘better’, ‘healthier and more ‘progressive’ sexuality in a way. But it needs to be said that these celebrations are in vain. Many kisses and sexual moments involving men as the Doctor weren’t consensual. They were sexual assault and fall under the banner of sexual violence. Missy forcibly kissing Twelve, Eleven forcibly kissing Jenny (a whole lesbian mind you), Cassandra possessing and feeling up Rose then forcibly kissing Ten and Amy’s forced kissing and rubbing on Eleven are all examples of sexual violence in the show. And the list is way longer than it ever should’ve been. Abolishing the need for sexual violence in the show will do more for women’s representation and sexual lib than just having a woman doing it instead. Trust me. Even if we look at the consensual kiss scenes of these eras, many of them weren’t inherently romantic either. Rose and Nine’s kiss was to save her life, Ten and Martha’s was a ‘genetic transfer’ and Twelve and Missy’s actual consensual kiss was affection between friends for example. After many users were exposed for sexual and domestic abuse in the fandom and the exposing of Noel Clarke and John Barrowman, glorifying sexual violence also makes the fandom unsafer victims and survivors than it already is. You’d think in light of this, the link between compulsory sexuality, consent and asexuality would be made and yet… crickets. Well, I’m volunteering to make that link. Even apart from all this I still have to ask why and ask queer fans to start asking why. Thirteen’s main criticisms are that she has inconsistent morals, lack of authority and not being challenged enough by the main narrative. Making Thirteen hornier seems irrelevant in the grand scheme of things because increasing her sex drive wouldn’t fix these fundamental issues of her character or of Chibnall Who as a whole. So why does it matter that bad?

Under compulsory sexuality, Thirteen does lack value in fans’ eyes because she ‘fails’ to live up to her sexual purpose as a woman, a lesbian/sapphic, a lover and a human. If she had sexual attraction she would ‘really’ be those things. But she didn’t, so to fandom, she’s not. Even if we did entertain the compulsory sexuality of these arguments, that Thirteen is just a lesbian with internalised homophobia, or afraid of dating Yaz because of hidden sexual trauma, or Thirteen’s not ace but just has some ‘abnormality’ that stops her from having ‘normal’ sexuality and ‘normal’ romance, what is the fandom’s conclusion of this? It’s not to push for a storyline that explores the pain of internalised lesbophobia. It’s not to discuss the ways the Doctor’s trauma shapes the character and their relationships. It’s not to give her any grace or empathy for dealing with an experience many queer people struggle with. It’s to ridicule and blame her for the trauma she’s accused of having. It’s to exclude her from queerness completely.

Fans will shun Thirteen for her lack of sexual interest in Yaz, joking about the missed chance of a good ol’ lesbian sex scene, but stick a ‘but I’m aware aces exist!’ at the end for good measure. There’s a weird cognitive dissonance in the Doctor Who fandom regarding asexuality. It’s generally accepted amongst fans in theory but not in practice. It’s generally accepted asexuality is queer, but the Doctor being ace isn’t enough to qualify them as queer. They’re only queer now as the Fifteenth Doctor, expressing sexual attraction (?) towards another man and in a relationship, but not any previous incarnations before. It’s understood having little to no sexual and/or romantic attraction and disinterest in romance and sex are big parts of many asexuals’ and aromantics’ lives but when these traits are present in Thirteen, she’s flagged as having internalised homophobia, being sanitised or non-queer instead of asexual or even aromantic. This is a common experience for many asexuals, specifically asexual lesbians, bi asexuals and pan asexuals. A feeling of attraction to women that’s incomplete and being viewed as incomplete. Similarly, this happens to aromantic sapphics. How can you love a woman but not want to have sex with her? How can you have sex with a woman but not love her? It’s common for many asexual sapphics to feel like their romantic attraction and asexuality are opposites or that only one identity can exist at a time. Lesbian, bi and pan asexuality are usually reduced to just being a sapphic with a low sex drive, a person that can date but can’t fuck or the instant classic, a cishet that just wants to be special. Because of this, it’s common for the asexual sapphic to feel isolated in both sapphic and asexual communities. I argue the Thasmin discourse has reinforced this isolation because Thirteen is flagged as asexual or lesbian/sapphic, but never both and that many non-asexual critics, both non-sapphic and sapphic, view Thirteen’s asexuality as the barrier preventing her from reaching her true queer potential. There are also aspec critics that treat her lesbianism/sapphism as the barrier from reaching her true aspec potential. Thirteen can be flagged as ace, but it’s because she’s seen as sanitised. Thirteen can be flagged as lesbian/sapphic, but it’s because she’s doing it ‘wrong’. When non-asexual sapphic fans want to push back on desexualised sapphic representation whilst aspec fans want a doctor that decenters romance and sex, the idea of a doctor that does both seems impossible for an identity that people already think is impossible. There is no ‘wrong side’ in this binary, so where can an asexual sapphic Thirteenth Doctor then feel right?

In reverse, Thirteen’s sexual attraction is flagged, but only in the context of puritanism and lesbophobia. Conservatives discuss and ‘support’ an asexual doctor but not ace as in ace spec, ‘asexual’ as in actual sanitisation. They want the doctor to be sex and romance free not as a way to fight compulsory sexuality and not to centre the aromantic asexual experience, but to restrict desire, especially queer desire. They don’t want the Doctor to be without sexual and romantic attraction, they want them to have those things so they can be restrained for a heterosexual moral ‘good’. Suddenly, Thirteen beats the frigid allegations because she’s now a predatory lesbian and inappropriate for her audience. This is where the other side of the coin shows its face; the sexualisation of lesbian and bisexual women. Romantic and sexual attraction between women is seen as immoral and perversion in Christian puritan contexts. Conservatives believe Thirteen’s lesbianism corrupts the ‘innocence’ of Doctor Who and sexualises it, calling it an adult issue not ‘right’ for children. Without any sexual behaviour, she’s seen as sexually predatory solely due to her identity. The reactions to Thirteen’s sexuality, or lack thereof, match the contradictions many asexuals, especially sapphic asexuals, deal with in real life. To right-wing fans, Thirteen’s romantic attraction to Yaz is inherently sexual, and that makes it perverted and a disgrace to their preferred pure ‘asexual’ male doctor. To non-asexual pro-queer leftist sides of fandom, her attraction doesn’t even exist and she is a sanitised, straight cosplayer, failing to copy the queer experience she doesn’t deserve to be a part of. The Thirteenth Doctor is shunned for her lack of sexual attraction whilst being denied the right to have any attraction in the first place.

Legend of the Sea Devils, in my opinion, is the closest the Chibnall era ever got to exploring this paradox. It should also be noted a queer woman, Ella Road, wrote this episode, which to me explains a little why I think this episode’s Thasmin moments worked. In the thassie favourite beach scene, Thirteen’s clearly referring to the short-lived nature of Time Lord-Human relationships, how she’ll eventually lose Yaz to something inevitable or outlive her. Because of this, the relationship between the two can’t work out, or at least not in the way they both want.  But watching this episode, I saw this slightly differently. I saw that subtext but also the asexual lesbian subtext. Her confession to Yaz is awkward. She doesn’t have Bill or Vastra’s charm or pull a big romantic gesture flowers and all. She just… gets it out. She doesn’t describe River Song as a Sappho-type lover or a leng babe but as a big inspiration in her life. She doesn’t call Yaz hot or beautiful but one of the greatest people she’s ever known, not in the sense she’s lesser, but that she’s more. Her attraction to women doesn’t fit traditional romantic and sexual tropes. Thirteen knows she can’t give Yaz the conventional sapphic relationship she wants because she knows it won’t last. Thirteen and Yaz can’t help either of their circumstances but Thirteen blames herself regardless. In terms of a sapphic relationship, she thinks she’s the problem. A feeling many asexual lesbians and sapphics sadly know too well.

That being said, we can’t know for sure what Chibnall’s approach to Thirteen’s asexuality was or if he even had a plan. RTD went for a sometimes-flirty sometimes-indifferent Nine, a heartthrob Ten and currently has a very flirtatious Fifteen, so it’s safe to assume writing the doctor as ace wasn’t on his mind (however I still support any ace headcanons of these incarnations as sex-favorability doesn’t automatically rule asexuality out). Moffat’s multiple anti-asexual takes confirm that an ace doctor wasn’t in this vision and was in fact against it, despite the glaring irony in how many ace fans would resonate with his characters regardless, how Matt Smith would see Eleven as ace anyway and how his work would end up working as a commentary on compulsory sexuality itself. Chibnall however had written a very ace-coded doctor but didn’t actively use the words ‘ace’ or ‘asexual’ to describe her. So I’m conflicted. Whilst yes, Thirteen’s lack of interest can easily be interpreted as an ace character and I see this myself and do accept it, asexuality isn’t a ‘lack’ or ‘absence’ of anything. To paraphrase the Asexual Manifesto (1972), asexuality is its own self-contained sexuality. Looking at other media with asexual leads, especially ace women as leads such as Koisenu Futari or The Imperfects, asexuality isn’t just hinted at or suggested. It’s explicitly stated. To many non-asexual queer fans, the idea of an explicitly asexual queer character might seem like a contradiction because how can you explicitly be asexual? But it’s not. Having a character explicitly state their little no to sexual attraction is a clear declaration of their asexuality and from the shows I’ve stated before, alongside other media such as Selah and The Spades, Bojack Horseman and even Heartstopper, this has done wonders for asexual representation. Chibnall having Thirteen assert this boldly could've meant listing his era alongside these shows, but I can’t. Thirteen’s asexuality ends up becoming another victim of Chibnall’s subtle approach to representation, which I’ve written about before. You can’t have a first marginalised person fulfilling a major role in the show, then treat it like another day at the office. It needs to be addressed, protected and celebrated. To give him credit for this just wouldn’t feel right. 

What I would’ve liked to see is an approach similar to how other shows were actually brave enough to tackle gay asexual characters. As stated before, The Imperfects has an asexual lesbian lead, Abbi Singh and her asexuality is addressed from the jump. Abbi’s insecurities in herself, her attractions and the sexual POVs people have of her make the show a great watch and Abbi an interesting character. There’s also Heartbreak High and their representation of Darren Rivers and Ca$h Piggott. How Ca$h’s asexuality affects his relationship with Darren is the backbone of their storylines. The joys, the heartbreaks and the solutions are all explored between these two. I honestly feel like the emotion and tragedy of Da$h is something Thasmin would've heavily benefited from and if Thasmin had it I’d probably join the thassies tomorrow! Take the groundwork and do something with it. Have Yaz wonder if Thirteen’s lack of sexual attraction means she won’t like her back. Have Thirteen doubt herself, her queerness, her humanity and her capacity for love because of her little to no sexual attraction. Make the doubts and concerns she has about herself and what the fandom and essentially society has of her as an ace sapphic part of that plot. Just do something! Asexual-sapphic-Thirteen had so much potential and I’m honestly sad we’ll never her develop in show. That being said, I’ll always support this interpretation of her so at the very least, she’ll always be somewhere here.

<-Intro Chapter 2 ->

[geminiperson]

Kicking it Old School

Alright, so the (American) government being the asshole it is, they got mad that we did the things that we have written into the constitution, namely community organizing and using our right to free speech and assembly to voice decent to the existing genocide occurring in Palestine, opposing the misuse of our tax dollars to fund said genocide, and point out that while they can not be bothered to reach across the aisle on any other issue that would benefit Americans, namely utilizing those billions and in some case TRILLIONS of tax dollars to provide help to struggling people in our country, they could agree to attempt to silence the millions of voices across the nation for their use of a platform that was developed outside of the country because of a hypothetical fear that they manufactured of a foreign nation doing the thing that American made social media platforms (including big t that I'm posting from right now) are already doing. Even though the data is housed locally for American users by an American company. Even though the tenuous "fear" they have is that the parent company of Tiktok, Byte Dance, which is located in China, has no direct control over Tiktok itself, which is based in Singapore, an entirely separate country that the Chinese Government does not have sway over (Just a reminder for Senator Cotton, the ignorant racist who refused to listen to the information provided by the CEO of Tiktok, a Singaporian National).

So the manufactured fear has allowed them to oppose a vast network of community organization, with no real enforcement to be had, which is a not so polite reminder that VPN's exist, and can be used to evade all of this. But regardless, not everyone is going to be able to afford the VPN option, and there should be a free option for community organization. So here we are, coming back to our roots, the OG, the classic, rebirth of the 2010's era, the tumblr blog has returned. I deleted my original tumblr years ago. I'm a public person, to the point that my own home is highly visible, albeit a bit tedious to watch since the one space people can see in to is where I sleep and watch tv. But being that my content was always intended to be humerous, if a bit jaded and dark, I figure now is the time to use my extensive talents and creative skills start doing something that I've wanted to do for years. If this takes off, I might transition to a full time hosted blog, but I'm a fan of grass roots starting points, and truthfully, there's not much more grass roots than tumblr. Additionally, the tools and skills of the trade for podcasting are available to me as well, and I'm not opposed to it, since I already knowledgable in the creation, and I could easily do things with it. Who knows, maybe this is the start of my full time professional career, but who knows. Regardless, I'm going to list a few things you can expect from me on my page moving forward. - Anime content

LOOOOOVE me some Anime. I don't interact a ton with the fandoms, mostly because there are some super questionable and problematic ideas (ships) floating around the internet. That being the case, I'll mostly talk about the ones I love most, namely One Piece, because I live for the display of leftist rhetoric and dispensation of Justice and Joyboy Wonder that is Luffy and his crew.

-Politics

I'm more than a little comfortable discussing politics. I've been involved as a volunteer lobbyist in the past, and I engage with and regularly review content revolving around national and international politics, and I think it's important to not avoid discussing it. My takes will not always be perfect, but I generally center them around the ideas that people should always come before companies, and people can generally make decisions for themselves regarding self identity and bodily autonomy. Science will never be political to me, and regardless of my personal religious beliefs, science will make the decisions for me regarding health and wellness.

-Tea

I am a lover of all things tea. I have a talent I have developed for a while now, of making home brewed loose leaf tea, and I enjoy sharing that knowledge and information with others. Tea is very much a special interest for me, on par with One Piece and Minecraft. So you will definitely see stuff like tea recipes and resources from me regularly. I have for some time now had a dream of owning my own tea shop, and I will absolutely achieve that some day. And yes, my love of this stems from my love of Uncle Iroh.

-Cats and Animals in General

I have two cats, Shadow, who is pictured in my current PFP, and Poppie, the gremlin boy. I intend to someday have a service dog again, and when that happens, you will be introduced to said dog, but for now, it's me and my demons. I have this desire to have a small plot of land with a few farm animals to watch over, namely a few hens for eggs, maybe a mini-cow or some goats to produce fertilizer, but also I want live in the middle of the woods, so like, who knows how that will shake out. I'm a four seasons kind of person, and northern woods tend to have that. That is for the future to decide, but for now, it's just me and my cats.

-Lifestyle stuff

The category is broad, but includes all kinds of things. Home tech, cooking, discussions on queerness, and life tips and advice. I tend to write some of these from the perspective of me to my past self, telling things I wish I had known then that I know now.

-Music

Less focused on it's discussion, and more on presentation. I have a decently expansive taste, that only really excludes modern pop country, which I view as terrible. That said, old country, such as Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and the like, are among some of my favorites. That said, I'm also a hiphop head, and I've been to more underground rap shows than any other type of live show. -Mental Health

I'm mentally ill. I have been diagnosed with three separate mental health disorders, as well as ADD, and although I have never been officially tested, I am more than likely on the Autism Spectrum. I have lived a rather colorful life full of interesting choices, and I was not always given the grace I needed to grow. So from time to time, I'll have things to say on mental health. I'm not one to answer questions for others about their own mental health, because I know this is something that needs to be handled by professionals, but I will always do my best to be up front and honest, because I hate the idea that the stigma of mental health problems would prevent someone from living a full life.

I am looking forward to this. If things on tiktok continue, I'm still going to try to be active on tumblr, because diversifying your engagement can be beneficial. If you want more info about me, check out my other pages, including my link tree.

Stay safe everyone.

[fangirleaconmigo]

You’ve probably gotten tons of asks about it already but are you going to make posts talking about the new season now or wait till part 2 comes out?

Hello dear! I tend to think and mull for a long time because my brain is slow.

If anyone wants my preliminary thoughts that are subject to change after seeing the rest of the season, here’s a few things:

SEASON THREE SPOILERS

Canon bi/pan bard is fantastic so far. It feels very natural, the emotions, the chemistry is there, very special and particular connections, etc.

Joey said he had a lot of input and it shows, because it does feel personal. I love it. Anyone who listened to my Whiskey with Witcher podcast interview knows that I’m a big fan of that development.

He also talked up Hugh Skinner and I was like well we shall see. People always talk up their scene partners because they know them and care about them which is GREAT but that doesn’t always actually translate to the screen for the viewer.

But Hugh WAS amazing. Joey was not exaggerating his expressiveness, passion, and chemistry in the role.

Hm. Let’s see what else.

I really appreciate that they haven’t ‘dropped’ the centrality of the Yen and Tissaia relationship. I’m not a fan of the Vilgefortz Tissaia romance addition. But at least they haven’t minimized how important her other relationships are.

Tissaia and Yen is the relationship that hooked me into the witcher to begin with. It had complications and dramatic tension and I was intrigued by how it changed the two women. It is so central to me, and I'm glad it still is for the show.

Ciri: It’s a whole new Ciri. Very different from the books. It’s not worse, it’s just different. In the books she just wanted to be left in peace and wanted nothing to do with being royalty or the motherhood and reproduction that this entails.

She has like a rage moment of almost riding into Nilfgaard at one point but she comes to her senses.

But the show cast her much older and this is just a different story. It’s about leadership. She wants to be a queen. Like I said. Very very different Ciri.

I have always believed you can change things you're adapting, in fact you have to. The test is, what you change it to has to be compelling enough in its own right that people aren't sitting there bitter about what they are missing out on. And I think her internal struggle and arc has potential. We'll see how it plays out the rest of the season.

The stuff about experimenting on the girls and messing with their heads and mushing their body parts into one is obviously brand new as well. I don’t really get it so far, but we’ll see how it plays out.

I believe it's ideas adapted from Season of Storms but I've only read that book one time, so I'll have to go look again.

The plot line has potential. Again, the story in the books was about bodily autonomy and the villains were all trying to basically turn girls and women into breeding machines. The lab was discovered and was horrific in a different way.

So what they’ve done is a bit more “fantasy” and I think it is potentially a much better choice for the kind of show they’re doing. I don't think I would want to see TWN put in a bunch of extreme and graphic reproductive and sexual violence and torture. I think you have to know the kind of show you're making and have a consistent tone. So I'm open to something else, for sure. But I’ll reserve judgment until I see how they wrap it up.

I loved all of the Ciri and Yen stuff. Their conversation and scenes are great. I know for a lot of people it's sort of hollow after S2. Since I made the decision not to quit the show, I have to let that go or I'll be miserable. So, I'm blocking out and denying a lot of season two.

Season three I'm enjoying. Yes, it's camp and silly in a lot of ways. Of course it's a flatter more simplistic version of the story. But we are on season three folks. If that is offensive to people, they should have quit already. Hatewatching is bad for the soul and constant hate and hostility is bad for the fandom. If ya can't have fun with it, time to move on.

For me, I had a great time watching it. I'm actually re-watching it already. I didn't rewatch season two at all (except for the first ep) so that's a good sigh already.

How I judge the season's writing as a whole will have to happen after the second part. And I'll let you know then if you send me another ask.

What I'm looking forward to the rest of the season:

The lodge. I think Cassie Clare is a fabulous Philippa but I want to see her come into her own self. I hope that's coming.

Keira Metz's brass knuckles.

FRINGILLA. We've seen so little of her so far, but what is there has intrigued me. Where are they going with her? I hope she's a bigger part of the last three eps.

MERIHART I want Philippa x Triss so badly ghhhhhh.

Milva. I can't wait to meet Milva.

Jaskier x Radovid I hope is a satisfying arc, and I believe it will be.

Geralt and Jaskier in Brokilon oh I hope they do it justice.

WILL WE SEE THE UNICORN??

Thanks for dropping into the ol ask box hun!

[woofdrm]

what is in the water today why is everyone in their mother angry about the sexualization of people who consented to it

No because let's talk about it. For anyone out of the loop, there's been a shit show on twitter recently with people up in my business for nsfw tweets about George, and I just saw another stan dealing with the same issue for her tweets about sapnap (from a sturniolo triplet enthusiast apparently? I don't fucking know).

The argument is that sexualizing content creators is objectifying and predatory, and that by doing so you are reducing them to sex objects. It is the sexualization in of itself that these people have a problem with, not that it is being done without content creators' consent, because the content creators in question have explicitly consented, multiple times, in great detail. They deny this or attempt to add caveats like "well that doesn't apply here" or "that was a while ago". In doing so, they are attempting to remove the cc's authority over their own sexuality. To them this is perfectly fine though, because they're just protecting the cc from the big bad "sexualization".

This is why I'm calling these people puritans. They use the exact same language and rhetoric as conservative politicians, and just bumble their way around taking away people's bodily autonomy thinking they're the better, more moral person. An adult says another adult can say whatever they want, write whatever they want, and draw whatever they want about them in a sexual manner (with some obvious exceptions such as things involving minors)? Well that's TOO DAMN BAD because I think that's weird and gross and obviously the cc would also be grossed out (because I am), so I will Save Them from their weird gross fans who don't see them as a person. NEVER MIND that I am ignoring their express and explicit boundaries and desires; those don't matter because I know best.

They also conflate speaking sexually about someone as not viewing them as human. Which makes no sense, because the only reason we do so is because we have the person's consent, and the act of receiving and understanding a person's consent requires seeing them as a person, not a thing with which you can do whatever you please. Which means, these people also just don't understand consent as a concept. Which is terrifying.

These people trample all over a person's right to their body and image and sexuality in an attempt to keep them safe. They don't let content creator's have autonomy over their own boundaries and what they like and dislike, or do or do not find acceptable. They know better! They know that there's no way to view someone in a sexual manner while also affirming their personhood (how could you do that?). They know what's best for other's and what they should find acceptable, and so they will police and belittle anyone who doesn't fit that image of purity and rightness.

It is the most blatantly puritanical authoritarian bullshit I've ever seen.

[1968bullittmustang]

Online I don’t care which pronouns you use for me, I will answer to all of them.

I am old enough to have kids. I have a number of them. I’m old enough to be a grand, but I’m not telling whether I am or not.

Artists of every shape and flavor, I will love you forever if you tag your posts with your blog name, so that I can more easily credit you in the tags.

I support ao3.

Fiction is NOT reality, no matter how hard you cry about it.

I do not condone censorship for any reason. Censorship is Fascism 101.

There are a million things I will never read, and yet they all have a right to be written. Even if it’s so that it can be dissected for it’s bigotry, racism and hatred. Hiding it underground will not make it go away, but it will make it harder to weed out.

Critical analysis and critical thinking are your friend, try them out, you might learn something.

No one has the right to dictate how someone else handles their own trauma.

Tag your shit properly, so that people trying to avoid triggers don’t accidentally stumble onto something that could hurt them.

The Block Button is your best friend, use it liberally and often, it will keep the toxicity of this place to a minimum.

I tag for my personal use.

I will absolutely add a tag if you need it.

I almost exclusively reblog, unless something comes across my news feed that I feel compelled to keep a copy for myself.

I reblog mainly -

- MCU and Marvel Comics fan artwork (#fanart #fanfic)

- Anything affecting transgender people, and often a lot of other LGBTQIA+ information (#lgbtqia #transgender)

- Recently a shit ton of politics and world news (#politics #fuckwads of the gop)

Checking out my archive ( https://1968bullittmustang.tumblr.com/archive ) will also give you the character and shipping tags I use most often, in case there is anything more specific you want to blacklist.

FYI I use the #unclad tag for myself personally on any questionably dressed and or sexual situation regardless of how it is tagged by anyone in the reblog chain.

If your blog is empty, I will assume you are a bot and block you. If your blog looks like a porn bot, I will assume you are a bot and block you. If you’re a racist, sexist, fascist, bigot, terf, fake feminist, or basically any variation of these I’ll figure it out eventually and block you. My block list is about ten times longer than my follow list.

I do not allow anonymous comments because I don’t have time for anyone else’s bullshit, I have plenty of my own.

Yes, I am an asshole, but the very specific kind that would gladly let my tax dollars go to support anyone in need of housing, food, health care, mental health, disability aids, education, immigration, civil rights, voting rights, etc., but  fucking hate when instead my taxes are used to subsidize big business, banks, rich fucks, blocking voting rights, banning books, removing bodily autonomy from 50% of the population, and basically trying to remove any rights that don’t specifically benefit a hetero cis white man.

3/1/2023

If you see anything 

I’ve tagged with the wrong artist

I’ve forgotten to tag any artist at all

improperly tagged for any reason

that Is clearly AI art, but tagged with an artist

I want to know so I can correct the problem. I am human and I will make mistakes. But I always want a chance to correct them whenever I can. I am not an artist in any way shape or form, so my understanding of it is limited to ‘Wow I like that!’. But I will never knowingly reblog AI art, as I don’t believe it supports artists.

Thanks and have a great day!

(Unless you’re a fascist fuckwad, then I hope a sinkhole opens beneath your feet and you go straight to where you belong.)

10/20/2023

Things I’ve learned the last 5 years and keep forgetting to write down - 

Only the TAGS on the original post count towards monthly yearly talleys (so no matter how many times I reblog clint barton he’s not going to make the year end top 100)

Only the first 5 TAGS are searchable (so if you want someone else to be able to find your post use the most important 5 first)

Only the first 20 TAGS are searchable inside your blog (so when you’re tagging 50 avengers from the comics make sure the first 20 are the ones you’re going to be looking for the most)

Even if you follow all these rules the TAGS are so broken most of the time, it won’t always work

[thelocalconstellation]

I'm gonna LOSE MY MIND why has my dash been littered with posts about terfs or infighting in the queer community again or people just generally being shitty to other people online.

I promise you. It costs nothing for you to not be an asshole. No. Come back. Listen to me. Here are the life rules I play by. You can follow em if you want to.

1) You cannot be angry forever. I suppose you can, actually, there's just very little point to it. Also it makes you generally unpleasant. Life is in fact much nicer if you can tone down the grudge.

2) you can't be afraid forever. Not everybody in the world is Out To Get You. I promise. Nobody ever said that the things that are worth it will be easy or not scary.

3) Is what they are doing actively infringing on your safety and general wellbeing? Is it going to? And I do not mean are you going to have to be in the vicinity of something uncomfortable for a little while I mean are you going to be injured/killed/traumatized by this? No. Not maybe. Not could. A very determined goose could break into a hospital and unplug all the life support equipment. That does not mean it is going to, and it does not mean we have to kill all the geese. Calm down.

If the answer to the questions posed in number 3 is no, fuckit. Let em do whatever. The fun of being a sentient being includes getting to play the daily game of fucking around and testing if we get to find out. Let em find out.

Rule three boils down to Do what you want, forever and ever (provided that you are ensuring that others are also answering no to the above questions.)

4) Take responsibility for your actions. As said in 3, fuck around, find out. It's how we learn! But y'know. If you play stupid games (fork in electrical outlet) you're going to win a stupid prize. (Explosion)

5) no, the world isn't fair. No, the world isn't nice. You don't need to be either. You should still be expected to play civil. It's known as the act of learning when to keep your mouth shut. No, you don't need to give the homeless guy spare change. It'd be nice, and you might be making the world a little more fair, but the least you can do is not harass them.

6) do not attribute to malice what could simply be stupidity. Every single person on this earth has a list of stupid shit they've done. Yes that includes you. If somebody does something that drives you up the wall, there are a few options that do not include it being an action they took Specifically to piss you off. I repeat. The rest of the world is not out to get you.

7) when shit does hit the fan, you are allowed to be upset about it. Doesn't mean you're allowed to be an asshole about it.

8) fuckit, we ball. Nobody knows what's going on at any given moment. There is no manual to adulting. There is no instruction booklet for life. If you don't know what's going on, fuckit, we ball. Roll with it for now, avoid any big rocks on the path, fuckit. More often than not, it's really kinda not worth the hassle.

9) life is too short to spend being an asshole. If you want to dedicate your life to being a little hater, feel free, but it's just sad dude.

As for an end note, I am consistently surprised by the point of being human constantly being used to say why the shitty systems we find ourselves in won't change. I dunno how to explain this but we have opposable thumbs, creativity, and resources. Wouldn't it be cool if we could stop fighting for a hot second and go to space instead. We can defy gravity and put a man on the moon, we can tap away on a funny little screen and instantly send a message to somebody across the world, we can backtrack so hard from putting a hole in the ozone layer. I am suggesting that next on our list of cool shit, we start calling people who are intent on keeping this discrimination circus going cowards. The only reason to deny human rights, to deny a fair wage, to deny people bodily autonomy, to fail to be at least a little more environmentally conscious is cowardice and pride. Like. What do they think is gonna happen if they don't buy a 73rd yacht and pay their employees fairly? Oooo noooo they're gonna buy a carton of eggs, god forbid they save up enough to pay rent?

Also the bible is a book written several hundred years ago and has been translated 70 million times. As far as I'm concerned, human bias is inescapable. If it's not the purest form of it capable of existing then you are not reading the word of god you're reading the word of a man with a shiny hat who had people whipped for wearing a colour beyond their social rank.

[taliejane]

Review: Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall

I haven't emotionally recovered from the ending of this book yet so I have no hope this review with be coherent. Alexis Hall you know what you did 😡

This is the sequel to Something Fabulous (which is really enjoyed too) and this time follows Peggy and her journey to discover herself and what kind of life she wants for herself. Peggy is in unrequited love with her best friend Belle when she meets the opera singer Orfeo (and promptly faints at the sound of their voice). What follows is a heartbreakingly tender love story and journey of self-discovery for all involved, interspersed with the funny, quippy dialogue Alexis Hall is known for.

Disclaimer: I'm already a big fan of this author.

CW: Orfeo is a castrato and wrestles with their own value as a person in that context. The subject might be triggering in the context of gender identity or bodily mutilation.

Spoilerful Review:

So I immediately fell in love with Peggy. She is just the loveliest MC and as someone who often carries the burden of responsible for many people in my life, I felt for her so much. Accompanying her through understanding what kind of life she yearns for and then ultimately finding a way to her HEA was beautiful and really gratifying.

Orfeo is also a delightful character. I didn't know anything about the horrific Castrati tradition before reading. It was a really interesting perspective on identity and gender (and really heartbreaking at times). Orfeo's patron is a real SOB and the scene of their reunion was incredibly difficult to read (honestly I was nearly crying). But I just loved how they have moments with Peggy where they are allowed to stop performing and just be themselves. They are given the space to have some autonomy and to be seen as more than a sort of beautiful artifact.

Alexis Hall always does this thing where you think you're just reading a fun regency romp and then BAM your heart is shattered into one million pieces and you just lie in bed for a few hours staring at the ceiling?

The Tarleton's are back for more shenanigans. Honestly, I think because I related so much with Peggy in this book, Belle and Bonny really bothered me at some points. I mean they are as wonderfully ridiculously as in the first installment, and Belle has a difficult arc of self-discovery which I totally emphasised with, but OH MY GOD can you maybe not kidnap someone AGAIN and make it everyone's problem AGAIN? Peggy deserved some freedom as her own person, untethered to the whims of the Tarletons, and I am SO HAPPY she got there in the end. Anyway I would die for Peggy.

Of course, Valentine and Bonny are delightful as ever. We even see some really tender moments from Valentine which added a lot to pur understanding of him as a generally asexual/demisexual character, desperately in love with one man in particular 💗.

Overall, this is another 5 star AJH read. The dialogue? Hilarious. The character development? Emotionally devastating. The side characters? Fantastic. The insane regency surnames? A gift.

I was wondering throughout this book, since we meet the Duke and Duchess of Marshalsea, if maybe regency books from the perspective of the working classes might become a thing. It's increasingly difficult to empathise with the wealthy (we live in a society) and I really enjoyed the brief discussion of classism and inequality!

[forestlingincorporated]

I wanna talk about Janet Drake

I’m not against exaggeratedly evil versions of Tim’s parents, tbh. It’s fanfiction, if we can depict an Exaggeratedly Good version of Bruce (which we can, and I do, and I love) then we can depict the Drakes as Exaggeratedly Bad. As someone who personally identifies with Tim, and his brand of complicated parental abuse in particular, I find it cathartic to uncomplicate that abuse and rescue him from the Obviously Evil Bad People. 

That said, since much of comics lore is passed down word of mouth, the oral tradition surrounding Tim has developed this idea of Janet as The Worse Parent between her and Jack that was never really present in the comics. We see much LESS of Janet, and we have 20 years worth of comics depicting Jack as a neglectful hotheaded idiot who ultimate does love his son. More importantly, Jack isn’t very much LIKE Tim, so there is a habit to attribute Tim’s traits to his mother... and, as someone who really really identifies with Tim, Tim has... some negative traits. Tim can be a bitch sometimes. He’s fiercely intelligent and sweet and kind, with a strong sense of justice, but he can be cold and judgmental and unthinking - he fights those traits, but he does have them. 

And it is perfectly fine to depict Janet that way. I’ve enjoyed depictions of Cold Calculating Janet Drake, but it’s not the ONLY option, and I want to challenge fans to consider different avenues. Tim could pick up these traits from anywhere: a nanny, Mrs. Mc Ilvaine (”Mrs. Mac”), a teacher, tv, Sherlock Holmes novels, Bruce Wayne himself. Tim is capable of not being like EITHER parent. 

So, what do we KNOW about Janet? (I’ll also touch on Jack, but only in scenes he appears with Janet.) 

When Janet was first introduced she was depicted as a gentle but “modern” woman. This was written in 1989, told by a 13 year old Tim, so this theoretically was meant to take place in 1979. I’m not here to give a lecture on the history of sex discrimination in the united states, but much of the legislation protecting women in the workforce or surrounding women’s bodily autonomy would have been very very new in this initial depiction. 

Here, Janet is shown to be encouraging, emotional, maternal, and projects her own feelings onto Tim. Jack is shown to be slightly sexist, possibly discouraging, but not overbearing. And the artist is shown not to know how to draw children. 

To insert some speculation, I think it’s important to note all the Drakes witnessed a terrible murder/accident that day. I point this out, because this is the last time Jack and Janet are depicted this way. It’s possible they changed as a result of this event specifically. 

However, this is also a story being told by Tim. It’s also possible these events aren’t really “real” at all, and Tim is misremembering what his parents were like as a three-year-old, possibly projecting a more palatable version of his parents into the narrative. This is entirely up to personal interpretation. 

In fact, the Drakes are shown in Legend of the Dark Knight attending Haly’s Circus, and the artist knows what a toddler looks like and they’re depicted as already having a slightly strained relationship. Jack is clearly on the defensive, and Janet seems to be passive-aggressive, though she could just be attempting to explain the situation to her toddler honestly. The intended tone isn’t especially clear. 

I do want to point out, in this depiction, Tim isn’t being carried like he was in the previous one. He’s walking ahead of his parents, which isn’t a terrible horrible crime, but could be dangerous in a crowded place like the circus. Might be a subtle hint to his parents overall neglect. 

Back to A Lonely Place of Dying, in Tim’s memories of the night he discovered Robin and Dick Grayson were the same person at nine-years-old, his parents are home, and watching TV together while Tim played... trucks, idk, in the living room with them. (This is semi-interesting, because you could say “oh, Tim liked vehicle toys as a kid” or you could extrapolate that this is another subtle indication of Jack’s sexism, providing Tim with appropriately “boy toys.” Either interpretation is valid. If Tim was assigned female at birth, would they have been given “girl toys,” or allowed to play with whatever they wanted?) 

This is, to my knowledge, the only panel of the Drakes when Tim is between ages 3 and 13. They’re all together, which might indicate that the Drakes were home more often when Tim was 9, only later going on business trips when Tim was “old enough” but... 

This is Tim’s boarding school when he’s 13. While most boarding schools in the US are for grades 9-12, Tim is clearly not a freshman at age 13; look how much younger the other kids in this panel are. In the US, the youngest you can attend most boarding schools is 7. 

That means Tim could have begun going to boarding school anytime between 7 and 13. He most likely spent all of middle school in boarding school, at least. There are an almost infinite number of possible ways the Drakes handled having a business that required lots of international travel, an archeology hobby, AND a very young child. Janet staying home until Tim was 7, 11, 13, is equally possible as the Drakes having a nanny until 7, 11, 13. Tim just doesn’t talk about that period of his life very much.

(”What about Mrs. Mac?” - it is unclear when Mrs. Mac begins working for the Drakes. We only see her when Jack comes out of his coma. She could either be a long standing staff member, or a recent hire.) 

Note: I’ve seen it said that it’s canon that “According to Tim, when his parents were home, they made a point to try and include him in their activities, bringing him along to events that were normally adults only.” I have never seen this panel, or I don’t remember it, so I cannot confirm, but I also cannot debunk this because... comics. 

By the time Tim is 13, Jack and Janet are away on business trips a lot, with limited communication, and no firm return date. If I’m feeling generous, I’d say it was harder to communicate internationally in 1990 than it is today. If I’m not feeling generous, I’d say the Drakes are extremely wealthy, and international communication was easier than ever before in the 80s and 90s. They’re not even going home to see Tim in a week or two, they’re going home and calling Tim at boarding school in a week or two. 

Even Bruce thinks its weird, though he doesn’t say so to Tim’s face. It’s written almost as if Tim’s parents’ neglect was meant to be a plot point that just got forgotten about. 

Tim’s parents are fighting at this point (their poor assistant), but Janet still goes with Jack on these business trips. And she’s clearly involved in the business, somehow, but the comics never SAY what Janet’s JOB is. We’re told Jack is the exec, but Janet is ONLY ever referred to as Jack’s wife, though they’re later described as the “heads” of the company, plural. 

Just to be clear, this is Jack’s business. There’s a perception that Jack is a bad business man because he and Janet fight over company decisions, and Jack looses the business after Janet dies, but Jack looses the company YEARS after Janet dies, and maintains it for about a year after No Man’s Land at that. We’re not told how Jack looses the business, but he’s got to be doing something right. Janet isn’t necessarily the “real brains” of Drake Industries. 

And I’m not... gonna... touch the... exploitation and racism because... I’m not qualified to do that. But, here’s the panel. The Drakes sure seem exploitative and racist in their business decisions. Someone else can... analyze that with more nuance. 

Regardless how how long they’ve been fighting, when their lives are in danger, the Drakes fall back into a loving husband and wife. Their marriage may be falling apart, but they do care about each other. 

I want to show these panels because it shows that Tim and Jack do have things in common. They’re both level headed in a crisis and can be somewhat cold in their practicality. Janet meanwhile and silent. Jack is later willing rant and rave at their captors, but Janet remains silent. 

That is, until they’re alone, and she finally lets herself fall apart. 

God, Jack can be obnoxious. Janet just looks miserable and resigned. I actually think Tim takes after his parents in this respect in equal measure. Tim can have a temper, but he can also be fairly melancholy and defeatist. 

Jack keeps reminding Janet to be strong and in control, which could be period typical sexism? But Jack seems so practiced and ready with the words of encouragement, and with Tim’s history with depression, I wonder if Janet has an inclination towards it as well. 

As the end approaches, when Jack brings up Tim, Janet seems to have a lot of regret. She talks about “wasting” the good things, and I don’t think it’s too big of a stretch to assume she’s talking about time spent with her only child. 

From this point on, Janet is at times spoken of, but not seen. Like here, when Jack says Janet wouldn’t approve of him and Tim being so “far apart.” He says this after he tells him he takes back his threat to send him back to boarding school, which might imply Janet was against the idea of boarding school? Though she obviously lost that argument when she was alive. 

Jack will of course renege on this later, but that’s Jack Drake for you. 

Or here in Tim’s illness induced dream, where he gets everything he wants. Though, since this is a fantasy of Tim’s, where his father and girlfriend are both more accepting and understanding than they are in real life, I would take this depiction of Janet with a grain of salt. 

After loosing Drake Industries, Jack thinks about Janet (though, they call her Catherine/Cathy for some fucking reason) during his depressive episode. And... uh... 

Hallucinates a Valkyrie???? Is this symbolic of suicidal thoughts, or is she... real? Or is he seriously hallucinating? 

Anyway, we’re not here to discuss Jack’s mental state, the fact that he forgot Tim’s birthday, or that concerning “I was going to knock some sense into you but you’re still bigger than me” statement from Tim, we’re here to talk about Janet. And even though this entire arc is about Jack mourning his first wife, they don’t SAY anything about Janet herself at all. I mean, they don’t even get her name right, so I guess what was I expecting. 

Then there’s Origins and Omens, which also doesn’t say anything about Janet, except that Tim’s memory of her is faulty - Janet was poisoned, her assistant Jeremy’s throat was slit on television, but Tim seems to have conflated the death he did see with the death he didn’t. 

The only piece of canon to suggest that Janet might be cold, is Tim compares her to Thalia. And even then, he’s really just saying Janet was protective of him. It’s kind of a scary look to make at your kid, but Bruce does the same thing, so. 

I do want to say... it’s not 100% clear if Tim is even talking about Janet. He could be talking about Dana. Dana was observably protective of Tim, though I don’t think he’s ever called her mom. He PROBABLY means Janet. 

And finally we have Tim visiting his mother’s grave (in a duel Christian/Jewish cemetery, make of that what you will), where Tim says she was “a little religious.”

And that’s it! That is all we know about Janet Drake in New Earth. Hardly the Mom From Hell, but she isn’t perfect. I’d be interested in seeing some alternate depictions of her within the fandom. 

I’m still gonna eat up Terrible Parents From Hell like a starving puppy dog, though. Just some food for creative thought.