#girl is under pressure

[dragonduckyquack]

Usual shenanigans on patrol in my Queen Bee AU. The three of them share 3 braincells and yet Ladybug always ends up having most of them. Queen Bee and Chatnoir radiate sibling energy to me, plus the fact Chloe and Adrien are literally possibly the other’s only childhood friend.

(Don’t know if I’m gonna keep these costumes redesign specifically, but they’ll do for now.)

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Paul/Chani battle couple falling in love while fighting side by side in a guerrilla war for national liberation felt like a gift to me personally for many reasons but mostly because comrades-to-lovers is SUCH a specific vibe and putting Paul Atreides into that dynamic is so so so so funny

[animentality]

not to be a fucking boomer but

was watching a streamer who watched a video with like five seconds of "we will rock you" playing in it, and one of his subscribers said "one hit wonder."

and I was

I was

I was like... q... queen?

one... hit... wonder???

LIKE. not to be a fucking boomer.

because despite the joke in my bio... I admit, I'm fucking 26...

but... but like... QUEEN?

one hit???? just one????

hm. ok. make me a real fucking boomer today.

[worstloki]

Tom Hiddleston once suggested Sif's actress Jaime Alexander could have played Loki instead of him.

Do you think your feelings about Thor 1 and 2 would change in any way if Loki were cast as a woman? (if the plot stays exactly the same or minor differences)

I feel like it absolutely would change my thoughts about Thor 1 and 2 but hear me out because the gender change in the context of what I understand of Asgardian society would mean Loki starts out as a younger sister thanklessly expected to mediate Thor’s violent tendencies and by the end of the movie she’s turned into what is basically Hela

[fluffydice]

A major problem I think people run into when looking at terusai that might make them dislike the ship is that if you don't have an understanding of their development throughout the series, the relationship is going to seem overly shallow. Teruhashi and Saiki are not static characters, nor are they simple. Both of their growth comes from learning that they are just humans at the end of the day. Teruhashi genuinely starts to like Saiki (and all their friends) because she realizes she's not above it all like she originally thought. Saiki is attracted enough to gasp, but only when she shows this true self of hers! If you stick them together when they're still in their early characters, of course it's going to seem forced. Learning to let characters grow, especially in comedy animes, is hard for a lot of people, especially when it's not an 'in-your-face' kind of thing.

[sbrn10]

Imogen Temult: I am the storm, baby.

☝️ This is Laura Bailey being hot af.

☝️ This is also Imogen Temult lying her teeth off because she feels threatened.

[squishosaur]

did you finally get sick of the lies you've been feeding yourself?

[lesbianfakir]

I could write a three hour video essay on tutu and gender but I really love how a show in a genre that’s primarily targeted towards girls explores how expectations of masculinity can traumatize young boys.

This is shown with Fakir especially. While the text never explicitly attributes his behavior to his gender, his arc over the course of the show is quintessentially informed by toxic gender roles. This got long and I have a lot of thoughts so I'm gonna put it under a readmore:

Fakir has one unchanging goal for the duration of the show: he wants to keep the people he loves safe. But outside elements twist this motivation into an identity. He is suffocating under the weight of a person he has never been and can never be no matter how hard he tries to mold himself.

Much of his personality is likely a direct result of circumstance. We are shown multiple times that when he feels in his element he’s inclined to a gentle disposition (ie how he acts with Duck as a duck or with Raetsel). As a young child especially he appears earnest and naive, his already innate desire to protect blinding him to the cruelty of the world. However, this sweeter side is near overwritten by the cold, domineering personality that characterizes his early appearances in the show.

We can infer that without the trauma inflicted on him by the story Fakir would have retained much more of this gentler personality as he grew up. Instead, his desire to protect others is twisted and warped by fear, becoming a desire to control.

Even before having his life upended, Fakir wanted to to take the weight of protecting the entire town all upon himself. He sees a true hero as someone who stands on his own without help.

So how does this tie into gender? Fakir deliberately crushes his "weaker" side--the earnest, sensitive young boy in the favor of a tough persona. He particularly views emotions as a weakness. It's notable that in one of the most iconic scenes in the show, Fakir has a breakdown over someone seeing him crying. This simple display of human emotion is enough to completely shatter the image he has constructed for himself. Fakir's harsh, impossible standards for himself are rooted in toxic masculinity, in the idea that men--real men--are never visibly sad or scared.

Immediately after losing everything as a child, Fakir was given a new source of hope and pride: the role of the Knight. He, of course, built his whole identity around this role. The Knight, like the Prince is expected to protect others without fear. This can be read as analogous to how men struggle under the expectation to be the protectors and the breadwinners, expected to take pain and hardship upon themselves so those under their care may live a comfortable life. However, the story's knight is doomed from the start: a failed protector. Fakir is growing up under literal impossible standards. He's meant to give everything and crumble under that weight without achieving anything.

It's worth noting that the Princesses' roles are meant to revolve seeking affection from men while the men's roles are colored by violence. Contrast the Knight and Princess Tutu who are both destined to accomplish nothing and be forgotten: while Tutu gracefully dissolves into a speck of light, the Knight is gruesomely torn apart. Here, masculinity becomes inextricably linked to violence in Drosselmeyer's world.

For as long as Fakir tries to be a knight worthy of the story he is confined by a toxic gender role. A protector relies on the idea of a weaker subset of person--the protected. Even without malicious intent, this strips agency. Fakir ignores Mytho's wishes all for the sake of "keeping him safe." Likewise Duck doesn't' want Fakir's protection. In several episodes she begs him to give up on fighting and search for peaceable solutions.

Even though neither Duck nor Mytho ask for Fakir to fight for them he feels personally responsible for their safety to the point his entire self esteem rests on his ability to protect them. Despite his guarded exterior, two of the three times he breaks down crying are because Duck got hurt --due to his own incompetence in his eyes.

Fakir can only grow as a person when he stops placing everything on his own shoulders. For all he clings to the sword his real strengths are found outside of battle. He only saves Duck by opening up to her in his first display of willing vulnerability.

By the end of the series he has entered a genuine partnership with Duck. Rather than a one-sided relationship where he sees himself as her protector, he writes her story and trusts her to guide herself through it. This is in direct opposition to the masculine ideals he clung so hard to. The knight and the prince --his role models--are both meant to be self-sufficient in the original fairytale. Instead, Fakir is able to be a vulnerable boy who gets scared and hurt--and doesn't need to hide it--but has friends he can rely on when times are tough.

Fakir's arc doesn't involve him becoming more feminine, necessarily, but it does show him breaking free of the standards placed on his shoulders by toxic masculinity. He was never meant to be a fighter; that was an unfair role he was forced into. At the end of the show Fakir was achieved his freedom. He isn't a knight. He isn't a protector. He isn't personally responsible for the lives of those he loves. He's just Fakir.

[play-my-game]

[thinkinginfiguresof8]

26/02/24

you’ve been given all the right cards,

now you just have to play them right

[dragynkeep]

Ruby in v1: "I don't want people to think I'm special or anything! I just want to a normal girl with normal knees"

V9's epilogue:

[drenched-in-sunlight]

am back on my elden ring bullshit and scrolling through your art and the way you articulate ranni’s fingers hrggggggggg i am eating my entire fist

also malenia

anyway your art is beautiful and i just wanted to let you know

you know it makes me really happy that even though it's been a while since i draw them, ppl still remember me as "dat fromsoft fanartist that draws WOMEN. WOMEN IN LOVE"

hehe thank you!

[daylightdiaz]

guys be honest do you think i can finish my valentine’s day buddie fic (i haven’t started it) by tomorrow (valentine’s day)

[kaleuh]

I had a really really good time at the mario movie, it was a super fun watch and chris pratt's voice acting was honestly fine. like, it wasn't MARIO, but it wasn't terrible at the very least. you know what the ACTUAL problem with the mario movie was? the embarrassing girlbossification of Peach and how the film industry still cannot understand the concept of what a strong female character actually means LOL

[theminecraftbee]

I love the magical girl scar au so much. And especially cub in this universe. Truly l am rotating him in my mind at all times.

How does him getting possessed actually go? Obviously lots of chaos, but I'm curious what happens from an interpersonal perspective. He doesn't really seem like he'd react very well to not just losing control of himself, but also putting scar in danger.

Out of curiosity, does he have any issues when he first gets actual powers, what with them being at least somewhat similar to what happened when he got possessed?

I AM SO GLAD. i too love cubfan so i am glad other people rotate him, even if in the context of this au.

so like... okay. how the possession actually goes is that, if you ask cub, he fucks up. he lets his guard down. he goes "yeah sure man i'd love some chaos" without thinking because, and this is a thing he'll only admit to himself: he'd felt drained of chaos, lately. he'd had to be too responsible. he'd also been... afraid, a thing that he hadn't been in a long time. cub isn't the kind of person who fears easily. cub's the kind of person who's certain in himself. cub is - maybe none of those things, right now.

so a spirit whispers in his head: hey, you seem like you need an outlet. wanna just cause some chaos?

and like, spirits don't make it easy. they override everything in you to make you want to agree. but the thing is, this isn't the first, or even the thirtieth time cub has heard a spirit. hell, it's probably in the seventies. and sure, the spirit isn't normally possessing him, but he should know better. he should probably fight back at least a little.

cub doesn't. he just... relaxes into it.

the good news is, that like many spirit victims, his memory of his time possessed is a little hazy. he doesn't remember a lot of the stuff he did to scar directly. but it feels like he's the one who did it. according to scar, it had been mostly "pranks". cub is fairly certain some of the things he pulled don't count as "pranks", given his main abilities seemed to involve scrambling the properties of things, and he's pretty sure he scrambled a lot of things that... aren't meant to be scrambled.

(he's... pretty sure he killed at least someone. which. not processing that one very well over here. at least later, when he meets the support group, he learns he's not the only one trying to mentally process that, even if the magic is largely reversed later. he didn't expect that hearing from other spirit victims would help so much, given he hears from them all the time in the context of helping scar, but... yeah, the support group helps.)

and then. here's the thing. it is seeing scar that makes cub try to start fighting back. to remember everything jellie and scar had talked about when it came to spirits. in the end, scar doesn't re-capture the spirit of chaos; cub forces it into an equilibrium because he refuses to hurt scar, no matter how much he wants to just have an outlet where he doesn't have to care. no matter how exhausted he is of being scared, of being responsible, of being uncertain, of having to care about consequences, he refuses to let that let him hurt scar. he'll find another outlet for chaos. he'll -

well, what he does is burst out of the possession and transform properly for the first time, the spirit of chaos relegated to a partner in his head, powers directly influenced by the spirit in his hands. the only thing that stops him from panicking is how proud scar looks. when he detransforms and the small ferret the spirit of chaos turns into lands on his shoulders, though...

well, you ask if cub has hangups, given that his powers are also based in the chaos he caused while possessed? yes. absolutely. cub HATES having to work with the spirit of chaos to properly transform and only does it because it will make him better at what he does than he already was - and he was very good at what he does. it takes a combination of the support group, advice from jellie, and finally just talking to the spirit and admitting to the fact he really, really just wants to be able to cause problems without feeling like he's about to bring the world down around them for him to get over those hangups.

it turns out that 'getting therapy' makes you better at magic. who knew?