#especially the make up a word one!

[theoldkyokodied]

The Allegiance of the Ascended Vampire and the New God of Magic

[meamiiikiii]

silly comic based on a time i struggled to read live on stream :thumbsup:

context clip compilation below ASDASDFASA

(cw for brief mention of hospitals/strokes)

[marley-manson]

the topic is Trapper and the army as foils, you have three hours, go

In no small part the satire of Mash, particularly in the first half of the show, is tied up with gender performance.

The army represents traditional, stifling and violent masculinity. This is shown through everything from freudian jokes about guns (eg Frank and Margaret's flirtations in The Sniper or The Gun), to Margaret trying to cajole Hawkeye into performing a more traditional standard of masculinity while treating him like a soldier in Comrades in Arms Part 2, to many jokes and comments about (usually) Hawkeye not being a real man in contrast to army standards and various specific army personnel (eg Lyle in Springtime, Flagg in White Gold), to Frank and Margaret's worship of the masculinity of the army ("He's twice the man you'll ever be," re: Flagg and Hawkeye, Margaret's lust for MacArthur, Frank pursuing the sniper in The Sniper in an attempt to be a "real man" in Margaret's eyes, etc) to many jokes positioning the military as a sexually aggressive man pursuing Hawkeye ("Sure, the sun the moon the stars, your high school letterman jacket. Same deal I promised nurse Baker." "A receipt please, and promise you'll go out with other doctors," etc.)

In contrast, the main characters all fail to perform traditional gender in some way, from crossdressing to immaturity to indecisiveness to peacefulness to Margaret's masculinity and Frank's pathetic failure to live up to his own masculine ideals, to just about everything about Hawkeye. His cowardliness, his jokes about not being a real man, his jokes about taking the feminine role in sexual encounters with men and women, even multiple double entendres about his average at best penis size.

Trapper is the most traditionally masculine of the main cast. He still subverts masculinity in some subtle ways here and there, such as the occasional feminizing joke and mentions of not being in great shape, but overall he's the more butch counterpart to Hawkeye's fem. He plays the role of boxer while Hawkeye plays the role of diva in their respective manager/star roleplaying episodes. He's broader and buffer and plays football, often seen playing catch with someone while walking around the compound, while Hawkeye disdains sports and doesn't participate. He reads Field and Stream which Hawkeye derides in Alcoholics Unanimous while making a wry comment about shaving his armpits. A past lover nicknamed him Big John.

And there are many, many jokes about Hawkeye and Trapper being sexual partners. The recurring Uncle Trapper and Aunt Hawkeye gag, if my father sees this you'll have to marry me, for me? only if you put those on, your father and I will tell you what we did to have you, that's when I fell in love with him, etc etc etc. It's constant. In these jokes Hawkeye usually takes the feminine role, though not strictly every time ("Me and the missus," is one exception in As You Were, the dance in Yankee Doodle Doctor is another).

Trapper's masculinity is differentiated from traditional military masculinity in a few ways. Most obviously, Trapper abhors the military's violence. He never uses guns and mocks Frank's obsession with them, he's a healer rather than a soldier, and he's disgusted by the results of military violence on the men on his operating table.

He's also secure in himself. The military's brand of masculinity is strongly characterized by insecurity and overcompensation. Frank is the main representative of this military insecurity - a coward who insists he's brave (The Army Navy Game), a man who clings to a phallic gun to compensate for his sexual and gendered inadequacies (a main theme of The Sniper, perfectly mirrored when the army itself comes in with a vastly disproprotionately powerful automatic machine gun on a helicopter to shoot down one sixteen year old), a homophobe repressing his own attraction to men (As You Were, the original script of George), etc. We also see this in Flagg, who implicitly sublimates sexual urges into violence (seen when he suggestively caresses his gun while describing how he wants to torture a boy in Officer of the Day).

Trapper doesn't need to overcompensate. He's well-endowed physically, he's portrayed as a competent and considerate lover, he's a brave man who doesn't mind being seen as a coward, and he may or may not be attracted to men but either way he's not a homophobe (George) and he doesn't express his sexuality through violence. When Margaret proves herself stronger than him, his response is to be impressed rather than offended (Bombed). When he dances with Hawkeye for a gag, he doesn't mind letting Hawkeye lead.

He's also differentiated in terms of tradition, with the mliitary representing a more propagandic 50s traditionalism, and Trapper representing a 70s, countercultural freedom from tradition. We see this in the way Trapper has plenty of sex despite being married, while adultery is a court-martial offense in the military. It's notable that he's open and carefree about it, while Frank and Margaret are surreptitious and hypocritical in their affair. This lack of traditionalism is also shown in his disrespect for authority, often in direct contrast to Frank and Margaret's worship of it, and his allyship to George who the military would persecute for his sexuality.

So ultimately we can see that while Trapper and the military are both examples of masculine performance, Trapper's masculinity differs from the military's in being more flexible, less violent, less traditional, and more secure. The military's masculinity is far more toxic than Trapper's, particularly in the context of 70s counterculture media, which aligns womanizing with sexual liberation rather than a lack of respect for women, accurately or not.

This contributes to their respective dynamics with Hawkeye.

Hawkeye, we've established, is usually more feminine, and there are a myriad of jokes characterizing Trapper as his sexual partner, as well as the military as a sexual pursuer.

The jokes Hawkeye and Trapper make about their relationship tend towards cozy domesticity. They're Radar's "aunt and uncle," they directly roleplay marriage ("Martha, we're going to have to move, the people upstairs are impossible,") and less directly behave as though married (the bickering in Alcoholics Unanimous, the discussion about naming their pony in Life With Father). Occasionally they're treated as a healthy couple in contrast to Frank and Margaret's toxicity ("While I'm gone, promise you'll go out with other doctors," vs "Touch anyone else and I'll cut off your hands" in Aid Station).

In some instances the jokes lean towards predatory - "If you're trying to get me drunk, it'll work," or "Who is this man in bed with me?" "I followed you home from the movies," but they're always playful, always fond. If Hawkeye takes on a submissive or victimized role in these jokes, it's one he has fun with and discards just as easily in the context of the rest of his relationship with Trapper.

So, it's important to note that Hawkeye and Trapper support each other and look after each other in an equal, enthusiastic friendship. From Trapper ensuring Hawkeye gets to sleep in Doctor Pierce and Mr. Hyde, to Hawkeye supporting Trapper when he wants to adopt a child, to Trapper right at Hawkeye's side as they attempt to procure an incubator, they are there for each other every step of the way. If their relationship is a marriage in some ways, it's a healthy, strong, and non-traditional marriage, an equal and open partnership free of jealousy and insecurities.

Compare that to the military's relationship with Hawkeye. In jokes it's characterized as powerful and predatory, far from an equal partnership. Sometimes it approaches positive - in Carry on Hawkeye, much of the humour is derived from Hawkeye and Margaret's gendered role reversal as she assumes military command of the unit. Hawkeye playfully calls her sir, seductively lies on her desk like a secretary in a porn film, and most notably treats an immunization shot as sexual penetration in a prolonged gag about sexual role reversal. Hawkeye has fun playing a sexually submissive role to a representative of military authority in this episode, but it is a submissive role.

Several of the one-off jokes have a similar sensibility, such as the double entendre of "My bellybutton's been puckering and unpuckering all day," in response to a representative of MacArthur assuming their excitement over the general's arrival to the unit, or Hawkeye's "Okay, take me, I'm yours," to Colonel Flagg. They demonstrate a willingness to play the receptive role on Hawkeye's part, but they also, pointedly, disturb the object of the jokes.

When Hawkeye makes these jokes that sexualize military authority, he's attempting to be provocative as well as defiantly drawing disruptive attention to his own powerlessness as a drafted surgeon. The power dynamic between Hawkeye and the authority of the military only goes one way, and Hawkeye gets a kick out of pointing it out in ways that perturb the representatives of that authority, but it's a power dynamic that takes its toll on him.

Many of Mash's plotlines revolve around Hawkeye rebelling and attempting to seize some scrap of agency back from the military. Adam's Ribs, for example, in which he starts a mild riot over the food he's being fed and spends the episode attempting to procure barbecue ribs from Chicago (which Trapper procures for him), or Back Pay where he tries to charge the military for his forced labour. A particularly notable example is Some 38th Parallels, in which Hawkeye complains about being paid the equivalent of a nickel per operation, and his frustration manifests in impotency until he can perform a gesture of rebellion against the military.

One unfortunate consistency of these episodes is that the army ultimately retains its power. When Hawkeye achieves his goals, it's only in small ways that do little more than satisfy his own need to assert his sense of self. Often, Hawkeye doesn't achieve his goal at all, but is thwarted by the army, such as in For Want of a Boot. In every instance he remains powerless in comparison to the authority of the military.

So the context in which Hawkeye makes these sexualized jokes about the military literally fucking him is one of abject helplessness. In a sense, all he's capable of is pointing out what the military is doing and putting it in his own, audacious terms. He's not capable of preventing it. His jokes usually have an edge of bitterness to them in delivery, and when they don't, that tone is imparted anyway by the greater context.

With Trapper, Hawkeye can play-act a marriage or an assault, but in either case he's an enthusiastically consenting, equal partner. Trapper's performance of masculinity allows for Hawkeye to take any role from victim to wife to husband, and enables Trapper to respond in kind from a position of equality and respect. The military, in its insecure, domineering performance of masculinity, is a dictatorial authority, never allowing Hawkeye perform any role but a feminized, victimized one, and only ever giving him the choice of whether to perform with a wry smile or a sneer.

In short, Trapper is the cool, considerate service top to the military's insecure domineering boyfriend.

I'm tagging everyone who enabled this lol, share the blame. @beansterpie @majorbaby @professormcguire @rescue-ram

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OH ARTHUR BENNETT.. such a gorgeous and intriguing character. terribly burdened by a GRUESOME set of crimes, his light suffocated by a HEAVY century of GUILT. so tragic, so dark and broody, and yet PAINFULLY awkward in any social setting ever

[lunarharp]

"Found out" set in kind of a made-up chapter where the girls are in trouble, or something.

[where-the-water-flows]

hello thinking about a world where di feisheng realises at some point during his ten years seclusion cave/JICU stint that li xiangyi was visibly poisoned, that basically nearly everyone would expect him to fucking slaughter li xiangyi because that's what he has historically done in fights, and also that that means that someone used him, specifically, as an unwilling (and unwitting) assassin, and so even after escaping Di Fortress he's still vunerable and nothing more than a weapon with someone else's hand on his leash

like idk that I have anything more than that. but also. di feisheng, feeling pretty helpless and trapped, in his JICU cave, living his own personal nightmare of 'never going to be free there's always another Master Di to escape' and also desperately trying to red string conspiracy board about 1)who poisoned li xiangyi 2)who set them up 3)who the fuck was trying to use him as basically an assassin, have they done this before, are they going to do this again, [paranoia spiral intensifies]

[six-of-cringe]

I think that one of the reasons why people misinterpret Wylan's character and arc, among others, is because they misinterpret the relationship between him and Kaz. This post has kind of mitosised off from the BFWP (Big Fucking Wylan Post) I'm writing because it's a bit of a different focus and constitutes its own post.

A lot of people talk about Wylan's character and development as though it's meant to match Kaz's - starting out as a nice kid who the city forces to become amoral, indifferent to violence, and well-versed in crime. These qualities are usually talked about with a weird reverence as an irrefutable symbol of "badassery", as though it's always a positive development for any character regardless of the story's narrative, which annoys me but is not the topic of this post. That's part of the BFWP's job.

Following Kaz's exact development is not the point of Wylan's character. The point is that Kaz and Wylan narrative foils - very similar in many ways, but with a fundamental difference that creates the "broken mirror" effect/shows how they could have turned out if they'd chosen differently. I think that difference is how they respond when they climb out of the harbor after their respective betrayals. Narratively, Ketterdam represents a very harsh system that presents the people struggling there with very few options. You can either choose to ditch decency, play by the Barrel's rules, and live, or you can hold on to decency and die.

When Kaz returns to the streets after Jordie's death, he chooses the first option. He copes with what happened through ideas of revenge, and to survive long enough to see it he quickly turns to thievery and violence. He thinks to himself after he robs a kid for money and food that it was much easier to survive when you've left decency behind. He survived through violence, creating the Dirtyhands persona around himself for protection.

When Wylan has to fend for himself, he choses the second option. He finds "honest work" at the tannery, where they exploit workers and expose them to toxins. He wonders if he'll live long enough to use his savings to leave the city, or if the chemicals would kill him first. He was smart enough to steal and survive, but he chose decency, and with it, he chose death. There are a number of reasons why he chose differently than Kaz despite their similarities - his older age and thus more developed moral code, having no one to avenge but himself when he believed himself worthless, his more privileged upbringing, and his relatively low drive to live. Alone, he would have died.

Then Kaz steps in. Kaz's role in all the crow's lives is that, intentionally or not, his ruthless rule of the Barrel creates a sort of haven that allows them to survive where they would have died had they stayed alone. Wylan is a really clear example of this, and though Kaz's intentions were at least partly self-serving, his involvement both kept Wylan from dying of exposure or street violence as well as prevented him from needing to do the more terrible things that it takes to survive in the Barrel. Throughout the books, we see Kaz kind of taking the brunt of enacting violence in Wylan's place - traumatizing Smeet's daughter, killing the clerk on the lighthouse. Wylan could get by making explosives in the workshop rather than having to shoot or stab or beat the life out of people. And at the end of the series, Kaz sees to it that he never will have to. Of course Wylan did bad stuff to survive when working with the Dregs, it's the Barrel. But the extent is greatly lessened because of Kaz's involvement.

Wylan's arc was never about becoming comfortable with violence, or becoming just like Kaz - the way people characterize him as some sort of ruthless murder mastermind is inaccurate and redundant with Kaz's character. He isn't nonchalant or celebratory about crime or death or violence by the end of the book. He doesn't HAVE to become like Kaz, because Kaz himself gave him the space to continue being decent, intentionally or otherwise. Understanding that dynamic is important to understanding what Wylan is like as a character and as a person. If you assume Wylan's trajectory is to become "Kaz 2.0", then you're going to mischaracterize him. I've seen posts about how Kaz was the Jordie that he didn't have to Wylan, and I think that makes a lot more sense. Because Kaz is willing to do the horrible things in his stead, Wylan has the third option otherwise impossible in the Barrel - maintaining his decency and surviving.

[dirtytransmasc]

^^ screenshot. blends in on mobile/dark mode ^^

that wasn't why she was mad though, well it was and wasn't. it wasn't that she had sex necessarily, but more the weight and nuance of it all, of Rhaenyra being the princess, who Alicent had been trying her best to serve the best interest of and protect in terms of betrothals and Viserys, having sex in a very public place. she was clearly upset and holding back tears when she confronts Rhaenyra that first time, but she isn't especially angry. she's angry when Rhaenyra lied to her face on her dead mother's name, going so far as to act upset and offended Alicent could ever insinuate anything about her, played the victim, had sex with two separate people in one night and said she was still a maiden (from Alicent's perspective she couldn't have known Rhaenyra only tried to have sex with Daemon and was unsuccessful, she could only believe that she had sex with both Daemon and Criston), and then used her power to have her father (the only person Alicent had) banished from kings landing, all the while she had put her ass on the line for her in front of Viserys, who never believed Rhaenyra to begin with. it wasn't simply the fact that Rhaenyra had sex, she's mad because Rhaenyra used her, hurt her, did harm to her name and the work both she and Viserys had put towards giving her a choice no royal girl, especially a princess, could ever imagine, and she spit in their faces.

there's also the fact that Cole admitted IMMEDIATELY what had transpired, asked not for forgiveness but for death, and admitted that it was dubcon. it's a very different situation. she also sympathized with the fact he felt great remorse for both the act of sleeping with the princess but also his breakdown that lead to the murder of Joffery. all we see is her stopping him and then a near decade has passed and they are close friends, we know nothing of how this friendship evolved, when she fully forgave him for his acts, what it took for him to earn her trust and forgiveness.

not saying either of them are saintly and perfectly correct in that situation, but you boil it down to the point that the situation is unrecognizable. you ignored all of the nuance on both sides. Alicent was never mad about the sex, upset yes, mad no, she was mad at how Rhaenyra could hurt her so horribly (amongst many other things. I don't think she, someone who shared her grief with Rhaenyra over their dead mother's, could ever get over how Rhaenyra lied on her name. me personally? I'd be sick to my stomach every time I looked at her for the rest of my days). Cole was coerced into sex, which he was honest and seeked death for repentance, had a breakdown and murdered someone (I won't defend this, you can't, he did murder an innocent person, that is a fact) but felt so guilty he tried to kill himself and seemingly spent the last 10ish years making up for it (where as I can name multiple people Rhaenyra outright in level head and mind maimed/murdered/otherwise allowed or dismissed the deaths/injury of, for her own goals and didn't give a second thought to so.... girly walks atop barely cooled corpse's time and time again).

[coquelicoq]

i haven't even tried to take a nap. i've just been staring at lists of hanzi radicals for hours, thinking to myself, wow, this would be a lot easier if you just memorized some hanzi radicals.

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

it makes me so sad how debbie grew up being relentlessly bullied by everyone at school and being friendless and lonely, then she got older and made bad decisions to cope with said loneliness however those decisions just led to even more loneliness as her family started to turn on her, then by the end of her story she’s back to being that lonely, abandoned, tormented little girl.

[eclaire-went-bam]

bcs i'm aware of how i automatically percieve people, i earnestly try to give the benefit of the doubt a lot. i tend to believe people are Actually Just That Dumb™ when they're joking about something, so i try to get ahead of that & tell myself people are joking when they say something stupid, so that i don't look stupid

all i've learnt in doing that, is most of the time, people aren't joking. they actually did mean what they say, & i made the situation 10× worse by laughing at what they said.

not only does it reinforce the idea in my head that people are Dumb so i need to take the reins on literally Everything, but it also leads people to believe i'm making fun of them for saying something silly & talking to me less, when, if i knew it were a genuine thing they thought, i would have gladly explained it without judgement

but i don't really know how to stop treating them as jokes, because what if they ARE joking so they laugh at me for how Stupid i am for taking the bait? i can't handle being made a fool of, i think i'd rather die

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

THE BEST OF PRIORITY: THE CITADEL (PART 1)

Featuring: Cmdr. Sophie Shepard, Lt. James Vega, EDI, and Thane Krios With: Flight Lt. Jeff "Joker" Moreau, Councilor Rannadril Bibsos Tembin Lesti Bensin Valern, Cmdr. Armando-Owen Bailey, and Kai Leng Kalahira, this one's heart is pure, but beset by wickedness and contention. Guide this one to where the traveler never tires, the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve. Guide this one, Kalahira, and she will be a companion to you as she was to me. Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition (2021)

[punkeropercyjackson]

"We need more m/f ships that aren't heternormative or enforce gender stereotypes!!!"You guys couldn't even handle Todomomo

[unhealthy-leon-brainrot]

i would like to thank every single leon x reader fic writer who has written about reader being generally insecure about their self and their worth in the relationship 💐😭

(if you’ve written one, please reblog with a link to your fic!! i promise you ill read it and hype it up !!!!! i seriously love supporting the leon kennedy nation!!! 💞)

[sukibenders]

Percy better than me because if I had to deal with Leo (and Calypso) blaming me for leaving her on that island, I'd blow a fuse and we'd have to fight right then and there.