#definitely my favorite gender

[holy-reference-in-a-username]

Look out for magic mirrors~!

Congratulations you activated my trap card. Take a comic.

Ell: Holy shit they're idiots.

[jessmalia]

Mal's Avatar: The Last Airbender rewatch: The Cave of Two Lovers 2.02

[verysmallcyborg]

oh, it's to you, i'll always belong

i was compelled to do a lil something in celebration of both fornax & ryss finally having the tummies they deserve :) butches deeply in love, your honor...

ryssrael is @oneiroy's

[ghostpajamas]

5 Aces

i've finished my lifesteal animatic, at last. go watch it

[marlynnofmany]

Scary Stories in Space

If you’ve ever wanted to experience the rapt attention of bodybuilder-shaped swamp monster/goldfish crosses, who are equal parts muscles, fins, and floaty silk clothes with absolutely zero interest in blinking, then I can’t speak highly enough of telling ghosts stories to a pair of Frillians.

That hadn’t been the plan; it just came up in conversation while we tidied the storage hold. Our ship was going to take on a lot of cargo soon. There were things on the floor that needing picking up, which was boring, so we passed the time with stories.

As it turns out, Frillians love ghost stories.

“Then what happened??” asked Blip when I paused for effect. She’d frozen in place holding a wrench and a heat sensor, wide-eyed in a cloud of fluttering silks and fins, all electric blue and bright red and deeply invested in my story. Her brother Blop was her mirror in aqua and lavender.

“Then,” I said, picking up a crowbar, “When he went to let her out of the car, he found a hook on the door handle!” I caught the crowbar on my hand dramatically.

“Ohhh!” they chorused with a gratifying flinch, for all the world like frat bros watching someone get hit in the nuts. “Near miss! Oh, wow!”

I grinned and put the crowbar in a cabinet while they rehashed the very simple story to each other. I’d already told them a few others, and I was going to run out of stories before they ran out of enthusiasm.

Blip asked, “What do you think they did when they found that?”

With a shudder like a bird fluffing feathers, Blop suggested, “Throw it as far away as possible? Run into the house?”

Blip nodded, fins still flared slightly. “Maybe both. Then call the authorities.”

I walked past to collect a stray cable. “I don’t know about the authorities where you’re from, but mine wouldn’t have been much help.”

The twins discussed this some more, then agreed that the best response would be to run screaming into the house and lock every door they could find. Only then did they remember that they were supposed to be cleaning, and resume putting stuff away.

After three seconds of silence, Blop asked, “Know any more?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Lemme think.” I shelved a box and looked around the room for inspiration. No ghosts hid in this storage hold, though it had been home to many an animal cargo. The reinforced clear pen was still empty, and had been for a while — our cargos were mostly boxes these days. The door to the hallway stood open, and I almost had a thought about some doorway-based haunting, but couldn’t pin it down. I moved to stack a few stale tubs of animal food while I thought.

Then my cat Telly walked in, recently free to roam the ship on a provisional basis, and I had an idea. The fact that Telly had made a beeline for Blip’s spare overcoat helped. She burrowed right under, sniffing out the shrimp sticks that were undoubtedly hidden in several pockets.

Neither Frillian noticed.

“There was one story,” I said, watching them both perk up like meerkats. Fishy, musclebound meerkats. “The legend of the Pants With Nobody Inside Them.”

“Pants With Nobody Inside Them?” they dutifully asked.

I tugged at my own pant leg. “People where I’m from wear a lot of clothes that are shaped to fit our bodies, and have the same silhouette when they’re empty. Just imagine how creepy and unsettling it must have been for the first person to venture into a dark forest at night, and see the shape of another human — but only the bottom half. Walking … steadily … towards them.” I took slow and deliberate strides toward the far side of the animal pen, drawing their gaze away from the shrimp stick excavation.

“That sounds terrifying,” Blip declared. “Did they run?”

“Oh, you bet they did!” I said, jogging slowly in place, then speeding up. “But the pants ran after.”

Blop squeaked in fear, muscly arms bent to bring his hands to his mouth.

They had no idea how hard I was working not to laugh. “That first person got away, and so did the next. But it kept happening, and the pants got faster each time. People started to worry about going outside, and wonder about their own clothes — they’d look at a pair of pants on the floor, and imagine it starting to get up on its own. Then OH JEEZ WHAT’S THAT?!” I pointed through the clear walls of the pen.

Both Frillians whirled and screamed at the sight of — as promised — an item of clothing moving around.

Telly bolted in panic, with one shrimp stick in her mouth and several others scattering in all directions. I heard someone down the hall yelp, though it was hard to make out over the Frillians screaming.

“WHAT WAS THAT?”

“WAS THAT AN ANIMAL?”

“WAIT, THAT WAS YOUR ANIMAL, WASN’T IT?”

“WHAT WAS IT DOING IN MY COAT??”

I leaned against a wall, laughing. I couldn’t hold it back any more. “Stealing your shrimp sticks,” I managed. “Sorry.”

After a little more yelling and hyperventilating, during which three other crew members came to see what the emergency was, they finally calmed down. The rest of the crew was waved away.

“So,” Blip said, clearly determined to speak evenly, “How does the story end?”

I was still grinning. “Somebody makes friends with the pants. They were chasing after people because they were lonely.”

“What!” Blip exclaimed, fins spread and eyes wide, which just made me burst into laughter again. Blop echoed her.

“It’s a children’s story,” I explained. “I think the pants wanted to dance with other people. Or they wanted someone to wear them; I honestly don’t remember the details. But they were lonely.”

Blop shook his head. “Lonely haunted clothing,” he said. “Your planet sure has some memorable ones.”

Blip picked up her coat at arm’s length, and I couldn’t tell if she was looking for damage or ghosts. “Maybe it was hungry,” she suggested.

“I’m sure many ghosts like shrimp sticks,” I said, picking one up from the floor. “I’ll bet we could think up a new story about that. Maybe they’re haunted by the ghosts of the shrimp, mad about being eaten?”

Their dismayed expressions told me that such a story might ruin their favorite snack for them.

“Or,” I said, turning on my heel, “We could think up a story about a haunted… stun gun! Maybe it keeps a ghostly copy of all the people it’s stunned. How do you think a story like that would work?”

To my delight, Blip and Blop proved just as interested in composing new stories as listening to old ones. The rest of the tidying session passed quickly.

I take no responsibility for the nightmares they inflicted on the rest of the crew.

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come!

(And yes that’s a reference to the Dr Seuss story.)

[crow-talks-hockey]

ATEEEEEEEEE CARLY ATEEEE

[saritaadam]

As a transmasc person Ken's arc is something that reasonate so much with me. It's about being born into girlhood but never really fitting, not being able to truly connect with the girls despite your best attempt and never getting invited to pijama parties. And than you're rejecting everything feminine, throwing away dresses and cute clothes, and invest yourself so much into your "masculine" interest that it becomes your whole personally and without realizing it you've became a bit agressive to hide all your insecurities about who you are. And finally you realize that you don't want that, that constant agression and performance of thoughness, and you're making up with femininity, find support and community in men, and accept that you're nothing but a dumb little guy and you are kenought

[beebonkbiki]

got reminded of this gender hc tier list i made a few months ago and i realized i dont think i ever posted it here? id just been having fun lol i love p much any and all gender interpretations of the characters, also when i say ‘on a whim’ i mean on My whims, as in ‘sometimes i hc them that way, sometimes i dont’

[hanzajesthanza]

nooo like reading maria janion's such comprehensive overview of vampires and what defines a vampire and how the myth changes through times and authors, as entirely expected, has contributed to my regis brainrot.

because though it's obvious how many tropes regis subverts as he literally talks about himself, it's more overwhelming when they're all summarized focused on examples from across history and the literature canon, and pretty much hitting none of them or fucking with all of them. because it's not that he just doesn't fit in within his own fantasy universe, but that he doesn't fit in within the broader canonical definition...

"my personal vision of fantasy (...) he is not the typical vampire bloodsucker, according to the dictates of the canon" ... uggghhhh sapkowski, in his witcher, by challenging all genre expectations and tropes, creates all of these characters that don't fit in anywhere, neither in their universe or in the broader canon. and thus, can only find fraternity with each other

i was just reading like 'so... so he doesn't fit in *anywhere*... 🥺'. regis in baptism of fire explaining how he doesn't conform to either vampiric expectations of vampires (socially, for his personal principles) nor of human expectations of vampires (biologically, for his literal existence). but it even goes farther when you look beyond the witcher and to the broader literary and mythological canon. in practically every understanding of a vampire he would not be recognized as one of them... and does he even want to.

[irenespring]

After my latest fic chapter I feel compelled to remind people who have never read the SGE books that Clarissa Dovey (whose ideology and behavior I did not alter) is supposed to be a good guy. She is the benevolent, motherly mentor figure. We are supposed to like her very much.

In related news: The School for Good and Evil is the single largest case of authorial "oh shit I forgot all my world building when it came time to do the story framing" I have ever seen in all of media.

[rosemaryyuri]

one thing i’ve noticed in those polls or posts about fandom misogyny and widespread favoritism of male characters in fans of fictional media is that people will always blame their consistent gravitation towards men on the media itself? which can be reasonable depending on the media but i think maybe as a response to that you should invest more in media that does have well written and fleshed out female characters. i promise there are some out there. and also a lot of the time it just feels false something something for a male character people will fill in the holes in the story and flesh him out where the media doesn’t while for the female character it’s crickets. like idk i feel there should be at least a tad more self awareness with this kind of thing? might just be me though.

[cherryozyi]

Just finished watching the Spiderman Across The Multiverse movie and HES SO GENDER!

[galaxylover06]

What's so special about my AU's shadow you ask? Well not to brag but...

Been absolutely loving getting to make all this wholesome Shadow art, along with different writing ideas for how Chaos energy truly works. more content is on the way

Stay tuuned!

[bl-bracket]

All this Himbo prelims thing is making me re-evaluate a lot of characters, it's really fun! Like, is Chen Yi kind enough to considered a himbo? Imp, no. Cao Weining however, now that I'm thinking about it, fits the definition pretty well. Which makes him and Gu Xiang a himbo-for-himbo couple! Power to them!

And I'm discovering other characters too!!

Anyway I'm having a lot of fun, wanting to say thank you for organizing this! (and thank you to everyone who submitted characters!) <3

Yes! I studied philosophy in school so I've got a lot of experience in the whole process of writing a comprehensive definition of something and figuring out what does or does not fit within that definition. and it's really fun to take fandom terms like himbo and treat them with the same level of seriousness and really analyze if a character fits into that definition or not. It is really interesting for characters who at first blush seem to fit until you really look at them and hold them up to your definition! And characters who you would not think of at all until you really look into it and realize that they fit perfectly!

Also yes Cao Weining and Gu Xiang being himbo4himbo is something that never once crossed my mind until this bracket and now I love them even more.

And you're welcome!!! I love organizing things like this!!! It's very fun for me!!! I'm also so glad that you're finding new characters through this!!! That's very cool!!!

[meatexe]

Top 5 horror films?? ❣️

this is so hard </3 i will do my best !!!

1. sleepaway camp (1983). this is one of those comfort movies for me n i watch it repeatedly um i think if i could go back to a single moment in time, [spoiler for a movie that came out 40 years ago] it would be my first time ever watching that movie and hearing that little boy go “my god! she’s a boy!” as angela turns around covered in blood n screeching n it freeze frames. chefs kiss. + i have a signed poster from the main actress :3

2. hellraiser (1987). another comfort movie!! i love the entire series n how progressively goofy they get + all of pinheads one liners go hard for no reason at all. but i return to the first one the most. my weed stash box is a lament configuration ^w^

3. videodrome (1983). watched this one a date w someone once n they got violently upset tht i would show them such a bad movie but i think i just had a raging hard on the entire time. i think someone should be able to put a vhs into my stomach n reprogram me. for normal reasons .

4. possessor (2020). i love a possession movie. i think some of my earlier intentional horror movie watches were the exorcist, paranormal activity, evil dead n it kinda stuck w me. but as i got older i think it all kinda felt regurgitated but…..possessor my beloved…… it has the formula of a possession movie (vessel + desirous force) but the vessel isn’t unwilling n the desirous force is a computer? it was like watching 90 minutes of raw fucking

5. mandy (2018). the shots in this movie r amazing, i love the coloring, i cried at multiple points, the entire plot is ridiculous. truly don’t know why it ended up at number five bc few movies have moved me in the way tht mandy has um just bc she’s down here doesn’t make her any less important <3 if u haven’t watched mandy u should

[1ore]

gender? in MY house? currently feels aspirational to live in the grey area straddled by historical figures who could be interpreted as either crossdressing lesbians or trans dudes but were too slippery to pin down.