#greatest lesbian love story of all time literally

[autailome]

jwqs has already blown up beyond any of the 2020-1s twitter fans wildest expectations but if it ever truly breaks containment and becomes mainstream on tumblr ill really be so happy

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Heather Angel (The Informer, The Undying Monster)—no propaganda submitted

Katharine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen)—This woman. I have been obsessed with her for years. I know the urban legend is a popular one at this point of her walking around set in her underwear when her pants were stolen and she was left with only a skirt, but the pants thing is honestly enough for her to be the hottest in the room in my book. She refused to wear anything else at a time when the public in general and especially the studios did not like that. She was independent, stubborn, and so so very capable. Competency kink anyone? Also, if you want one final way that Katharine's entire life was saying "fuck you" to the establishment, it started young! Her mother took her to suffrage events, and she never got rid of that attitude of justice. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of all the ways she was such a badass that I'm turning into a rambling mess instead.

This is round 1 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Heather Angel propaganda:

Katharine Hepburn propaganda:

I'm sure one million people will submit her as an iconic Hollywood star but that iconicness might lead people to forget just how insanely hot she was like she had it ALL she was skilled she was funny she was smart she was beautiful AND she was likely bisexual

The single word I would use to explain Katherine Hepburn's appeal is *range*. In her acting career, that meant covering all the ground between lush period dramas and the comedies she did with Carey Grant and Spencer Tracey. In terms of hotness, it meant an uncanny ability to bring anything from a Dietrich-esque androgyny to some of the best Classic Hollywood Glamour you will ever see.

Katharine hep was so cool. The VIBES, the INDEPENDENCE,,, living life on her own terms.

she just had this.... bearing to her, this power. she could be funny, even silly (like in bringing up baby) but also so regal and elegant. she was nobody's fool and dear GOD that's so hot

Fancam link

She’s not only stunningly gorgeous (those eyes that pierce your soul! a jawline you could cut glass with!) but her delivery and physical presence in roles gives off confidence and authority in such a sexy way (truly the biggest dick energy of Old Hollywood). Her fiery energy in The Philadelphia Story? Unmatched.

God she's. She's so hot y'all. She has the range!!!!! Funny and dramatic and lovely

She IS the transatlantic accent. Classically gorgeous and such a strong personality.

She's literally one of the funniest women to ever live! She goes shot for shot with Cary Grant in Philadelphia Story and we damn well love her for it! She's the most annoying creature to ever live in Bringing Up Baby but she's so insane and funny that we simply cannot help but fall in love with her (and root for her to give Grant an aneurysm!)

i know she's accounted for but i really want to be sure someone has submitted the scene in bringing up baby where she's pretending to be a gangster

She simply stuns onscreen; you cannot do anything but be captivated by her presence. Also a non-gender-conforming icon and mild tumblr celebrity by virtue of that one picture from The Warrior's Husband (stage play).

Katharine Hepburn was out here casually changing the lives of young butch lesbians with her gender swag! She wore pants even when people said she shouldn’t, she refused to marry or have kids, and she wore menswear in at LEAST one movie!

Someone's got to mention it, but she's won the most Oscars out of any performer and is largely considered one of the greatest actresses ever. She's got an incredible voice, an incredible presence, and she absolutely steals every scene she's in. She was private person and deemed standoffish and unapproachable, but she was also profoundly concerned for people's rights and was an outspoken supporter of abortion access. Finally, the Katharine Hepburn slacks look is just iconic. I mean look at her.

If I start thinking about her face for too long I will cry she is so so hot. Katherine is so charismatic and charming in everything she appears in - watch her adopt a leopard and fall in love with her. Also she has the biggest dick energy ever (she and her pal Lauren Bacall share that accolade). Also had an incredibly long and varied career from screw ball comedies to serious dramas - she’s a queen of the screen and I adore her.

(I hope someone else submits real propaganda but just in case they don't:) Cries. Screams. Wails. The woman who singlehandedly made me realize I was bi. A real "do i want to look like her. be her. or be with her.' crisis, where the answer was all three. Holy shit please all three.

[jenatwork]

I finally finished my Utena re-watch yesterday, binging the last three episodes and Adolescence in one evening, and I am Having Thoughts. Mostly about the story from Akio's perspective, surprisingly.

I don't know if I've ever read anyone's exploration of the story from his pov, so I'm going to brain-vomit about it.

From his pov, he's the one who's trapped. The Rose Bride sealed Dios away from the world, whether for his own good or to keep her brother to herself, or both. The princely part of him, Dios, is trapped, leaving only the human part of him, Akio, out in the world, trying to regain what he's lost and cope without what he sees as his 'real' power. 'The power to revolutionise the world' is, for him, the regaining of his heroic princely aspect that made him something close to a god among mortals, a natural leader, the greatest warrior.

So what is he left with? What does a regular human man have with which to find his place in the world? What is his role, if not a prince? Is he a ladies' man? An intellectual? A fighter? A logical realist who denies the 'miracles' the prince could perform to keep people safe?

It's clear from the Black Rose arc, and from the final scenes, that Akio has repeated the duels in some form many times, assuming that he needs the right sword to open the Rose Gate and access his old power. He holds this 'might makes right' belief that physical strength or a warrior's weapon is the key to power. When Utena, just a girl, succeeds as the winner of the duels, at first he tries to persuade her to stand down, because how could a girl's sword possibly be strong enough to open the Gate? I wondered, during this watch, if this cycle was the first time that any girls had taken part in the duels, and whether that was by design or accidental. In the Black Rose arc, it's 100 boys who are drawn in to find the power or the eternal something. In this latest cycle, it's the student council, a power structure that represents intellectual masculinity: Juri, as a lesbian in a uniform closer to her male counterparts than to the other female students, might possibly have been the first girl to join the duels, an unintentional outcome perhaps inspired by Mikage, who was more easily tempted by a boy than by that boy's older sister. She still represented an aspect of masculinity in her own way, as the logical realist who denies miracles. Likewise, Nanami joins the duels initially to stand in for her brother, and leaves when she is confronted by how damaging the system is to the very people it's supposed to protect.

I wondered if perhaps Utena was never meant to join the duels. If Dios had meant to find Touga and Saionji on that particular day, and stumbled on Utena because they did. If Utena joining and winning the duels was never part of Akio's plan, and that's why he, and all the others, are so perplexed by her and never figure out how to get the better of her. Akio tries to force her into the role of 'Girl' because all he knows is playing the role of 'Man', and what else is a man supposed to do with a girl besides protect her or seduce her?

Utena succeeds because, for all her talk about wanting to be a prince to rescue girls, she gives up that roleplay and acts of of genuine love and compassion. She succeeds in besting the Rose Bride's curse because she doesn't approach it like a man, trying to seduce, fight, or logic her way through, but by loving Anthy and by having the compassion to want to end her pain.

Utena is still very much about smashing the patriarchy (literally in the case of Adolescence), but in its own way it also artfully deconstructs the ways in which patriarchy hurts men too, by limiting the roles available to them. Utena offers an alternative to the masculine roles of warrior, lover, intellectual and cynic, as well as to the feminine role of princess. The student council recognise it in the end, but Akio never does, because he is so utterly stuck in his role. That's why Anthy gets to leave at the end, telling him he's the one that's trapped, because Utena showed her that she, and we, can choose our own roles.

[deluweil]

To be honest the way part of the fandom has treated this Tommy character as a god makes me dislike him more. Unfortunately the Buck bi arc was tainted for me because it all feels force. Also what doesn't help is that Eddie was to much involved in that storyline.

The way people are acting like it's a perfect relationship and yet we barely saw them together feels just weird.

Also I don't like how some literally push Eddie away for this new white man.

This is Taylor Kelly all over again. The sad part is that the season is short and people wAnt to to spend their time giving more to the new guy.

I hope him and Marisol are gone, but I'm afraid. These two characters took the joy out of the Buck and Eddie storyline for me.

The fandom, I think, in this case, is definitely the problem here,

Lou is completely unassuming and enjoying the process and being a buddie shipper just like us - if one actually bothers to read the interviews and not just pick and choose what to talk about.

That is what makes me like Lou.

The fandom has somehow glorified Tommy's character after a couple of episodes and yeah it rubs the wrong way, because, what about the story we had so far?

Is season 7 a reset to 911? and everything that came before that doesn't count? Why not just make it 911 abc pilot then?

I don't think that's the case, but I think the last minute switch between Buck and Eddie kind of ruined it for the Tim because, yes, in a way it feels forced and out of left field.

Supposed that Buck was indeed vying for Tommy's attention, why do it like that? and why involve Eddie in the first place?

I have a lot of questions and my main problem here is not that Buck is experimenting with Tommy, it's the way they practically propelled this ship off the cliff into a dangerous spin, they went from zero to 200 in a second. - That is not how you build a relationship.

You don't try to figure out what you want, mess up the first date, then invite said date to an apology coffee and then invite him to family wedding on the way. It just doesn't work that way.

I may be straight, but I have gay and bi and lesbian friends, neither one of them has ever brought a second or even a third date to so much as a friends get together before they were sure that this is something that would last, before they brought the intended victim to be judged by friends and family.

And people who talk about Tommy as being established in the 118 family, that is not true. He has a connection with Chimney in that that he owes him his life and an acquaintance with Hen, who is clearly not very fond of him, because of obvious past she had with him and their old house before Bobby came into the picture. - Remember - Chimney was her ONLY lifeline in that house.

Tommy was not a liked character before.

Arguably Buck had more history with Taylor than he did with Tommy (which is none at all) - But Taylor is a strong opinionated and often self-serving woman (not unlike Buck mind you), emphasis on woman. - That is the only reason she never stood a chance. Because the writers could have made her and Buck the greatest love story this show has seen, but they continuously managed to ruin any fondness for any female LI to ever grace that set.

And this season is short, to bring in a new LI kinda defeats the purpose of re-establishing the team and this show, because it does feel the same as any of Buck's old relationships that were being pushed for the benefit of 'god forbid Buck actually learns how to be alone and healthy and happy' - the only thing that changed in Buck this season is his sexuality and nothing else, and that vexes me.

My problem is not with Tommy, it's the perpetuation of 'poor baby Buck' society. - I love Oliver and I love Buck - I am tired of the ever repeating pattern of forgiveness for his self serving ways without any accountability that we keep seeing.

I don't think Buck's or even Eddie's firsts or you know what? even seconds should be each other, I am more than happy to make this journey with them, but let it be a marathon not a sprint to the finish line - they knew they would get renewed for another season, they could have written and built it better than what we got - because the moment they switched gears after the second episode, the story became written in the same messy last minute way both S4 and most of S5 were written.

There is no grand plan, at this point they are merely winging it and see where the wind takes them. - And that is idiotic, they had SO MUCH TIME to make this a well written story with the strike and long break after that, to write as they film is lazy and stupid and mostly childish.

And yes this is Taylor all over again, not in that they are the same type of people, but that Buck is jumping head first into a relationship without actually knowing how he got there. - Bobby said that himself - and it is the same, because who in their right mind invite a second (kinda) date to a family event? Like dude have you ever dated before? Do you how this works?

It is a LOT of pressure and not even for Buck himself - because he brought this on himself - but rather for Tommy (aka the intended victim) to be first introduced to the family after a couple of dates when he himself has no idea where he and Buck are standing.

Marisol, has indeed sucked the joy out of the Eddie's story, I don't get why do either of the boys had to be in a relationship starting this season to begin with. Like, she is literally a handbag, the token hetero symbol, so to speak, what she is doing there? is beyond me.

The catholic guilt of her being a nun is bullshit, and as Bobby said himself, Eddie has no problem committing to certain people/things. She serves no purpose this season other than a seat warmer/ glorified babysitter since Buck is otherwise engaged.

They could have gone for Eddie finding his way in the department, Eddie dealing with his mommy issues, Eddie trying to figure out what and who he wants in his life, Eddie trying to navigate Chris' terrible teenage years.

They could have explored the fact that a guy going with his supposed gf/wife in the golf course checking Eddie's hot ass (6X17) - Oh wait, they were going to... the ground for Eddie's coming out was all laid out and they took a sharp turn to left field in the second episode of S7 and made it all about Buck again, because the Natalia actress couldn't come?? what kind of a weak ass reason is that?

And yes, the cliche of receiving the odd white man out (who played a controversial role in early seasons) rather than the regular casted poc male or the guest starring woman, for that matter, better is all kind of f-ed up, but no one would talk about that, of course. 👀

Anyway, I am hoping that whatever is coming next will be worthy of our time and attention because so far we got about more of the same as far as Buck and Eddie are concerned - except that Buck has just broaden his variety and has a bigger pallet of mate choosing at his disposal.

I have two very close bi friends, so I know how their minds work, because God knows they share with me more than I ever wanted to know lol. And one of them is watching 911 with me and she is happy for the rep as well, but unhappy with how it was developed too.

At the moment, I have decided to put any Buck and Eddie topics aside and just want to get the LONG AWAITED Madney wedding, if anyone deserve a happy ending, it's them. ❤️

[vivulapom]

cosmeretomb posting finally..

hello its me queen big dick of fiction mountain. ive descended from my glorious throne and will graciously give you the wonderful gift of gazing upon my story ideas. note that i care very little for how much of my choices actually make sense, only that they're cool and i like them.

ok listen this is a recycled idea borrowed from my cringe past self but listen. plot of tlt (there is a Guy who develops necromancy and then does A Murder and then resurrects all his friends and erases their memories to help clean up the mess he made in the first place. and then 10000 years later he gets some new guys , one of whom is an unbelievably sad traumatized lesbian) except yk set in the cosmere. shards as resurrection beasts. cognitive realm as the river. sixteen houses instead of nine. dalinar as the strangely paternal absent-when-needed fond of tea emperor

i have been undecided on who the lyctors are but tentatively there is (at least the living ones):

shana (w/ REDACTED as cavaliar) --- an oc :) formerly of the sixteenth house. technically you could call her the harrowhark equivalent but that's only partially accurate. she is The Main Character, also gets lobotomized, but instead of just replacing a single name she also loses her entire memory of everything that happened before she became a lyctor. at least it's better than being constantly in unbelievable amounts of emotional distress! probably. everyone is constantly trying to manipulative her to pursue their own goals and she's very confused all the time. so she's not doing the greatest as you can imagine

sylphrena (w/ kaladin as cavalier) --- extremely depressed self isolating recluse obsessed with figuring out what everything was like before the king undying's ascension. has a very uncomfortable feeling that dalinar isn't being entirely genuine but has no way to prove it

shallan (w/ REDACTED as cavalier) --- severely unstable murder lady. struggles to sort out her own thoughts, has exactly None support system (literally and figuratively), generally everyone else just tries to Stay Away From Her.

steris (w/ waxillium as cavalier) --- my autistic queen. i love her very dearly i only wish she wasn't attached to that horrible boring man (who would be better as a lesbian) waxillium. good thing he's dead. she's extremely obsessive and nitpicky and very very thorough. at least she's not actively murderous

elend (w/ vin as cavalier) --- somehow an actually somewhat sort of reasonable charismatic normal sane person? misses his wife very badly of course but by far the most approachable lyctor. does suffer from a bit of indecision and what is "fair" or not and etc however

possibly jasnah (w/ renarin) or raoden (w/ sarene) but possibly also dead. i will probably go over the dead lyctors another time (as well as the two other new lyctors besides shana, isyvweth and sova) i just need to actually finalize a list and iron out their personalities

the plot is fairly separated from tlt itself except in terms of premise and worldbuilding. every lyctor sort of has their own goals, shana is perpetually kept just a little bit out of the loop, and overall i plan for it to take a very different direction than tlt or any cosmere story

[moistvonlipwig]

Person of Interest for the unpopular opinions ask game?

Well there's a LOT I like about Person of Interest, so consider this a kind of 'greatest hits' overview:

Thematically, the show is coherent and powerful; most impressively, it evolves its themes and takes them to unexpected places while still maintaining a consistent thematic throughline, and it manages to do this in often quite poetic ways. Consider, for instance, how Reese's statement to Jessica from 1.03 "Mission Creep" that we're all alone in the end and "no one's coming to save you" is both echoed and refuted in the series finale, with Reese making a deal with the Machine to save Harold and the Machine's final monologue about how "everyone dies alone" but keeping someone's memory alive keeps them alive in turn. Or how the genesis of Harold's obsession with computers was a desire to make a machine that could serve as a kind of external memory for his father with dementia, and how that vision is realized in a way he never could have imagined with the Machine surveilling & predicting people so much that the dead essentially live on inside her code, to the point where the Machine can serve as a kind of 'digital interface' for Root and extension of her brain after her physical death. It's just plain good writing.

Jim Caviezel is...Jim Caviezel, but the other main actors on the show are all fantastic, and a lot of the supporting/one-off actors are also really strong.

Sameen Shaw is one of my favorite fictional characters ever, and I appreciate that PoI chose to tell a story about a prominent, sympathetic character (a woman of color, no less) with ASPD who goes on a legitimate character journey without ever having to become "normal" or learn empathy.

Root is also an incredible character -- she's a prophet, she's a killer for hire, she's a transhumanist, she's a hacker, she's a lesbian, she hates marriage, she's a Shakespearean fool, she's a god in the making -- and Amy Acker gives a tour-de-force performance in the role. I also like her ending! I know a lot of people don't and to be fair it aired at pretty much the worst time possible, but I think her dying to save Harold and essentially 'becoming' the Machine was a beautiful and fitting ending for her character.

Harold Finch is so bitchy and so funny. King. <3

Joss Carter and Lionel Fusco are a great (literal) buddy cop duo, and I also really enjoy Carter's relationships with Elias and Reese, and Fusco's relationships with Shaw and Root.

I even have affection for John Reese, based mostly on his relationships with the rest of the core cast & the occasional moments we get of him being incredibly gentle with the number of the week.

And to be fair, while you can tell that Jim Caviezel can't act, you can't tell that he is literally reading cue cards the entire time, so, someone did some magic editing work there.

The Machine is so well-characterized despite never actually speaking until the last four episodes of the show, and I love her lots. And her taking on Root's voice/persona in the last four episodes was narratively brilliant (and was yet another showcase of Amy Acker's acting abilities).

The Root/Shaw relationship is one of my favorite romances ever, and is probably my favorite gay romance ever. I particularly admire the show's refusal to force them to neatly fit into normative ideas of what a romance looks like; I find that fanfiction of them as a pair rarely does the relationship justice compared to the complexity the show itself presents. I like that in the end, they do get a happy ending, of sorts; they were never going to get married and have a white picket fence and 2.5 kids, and Root was never going to make it out of the fight alive, but Shaw survives and adopts Bear and has the Machine-as-Root in her ear, and that seems like a pretty good ending to me, all things considered. Also, the Machine telling Shaw in the finale that Root loved her because of who she was, not despite it, was beautiful, and "she wanted you to know that if you were a shape, you'd be a straight line. An arrow," is maybe the most romantic line ever spoken on television.

"return 0" is one of the best series finales out there, with an amazing and startlingly touching final sequence.

"If-Then-Else" is one of the best episodes of television ever made, and should be studied by anyone who wants to write for TV.

In general I think Person of Interest was very good at creating episodes, which is an art that the streaming era of TV is slowly but surely eating away at.

Ramin Djawadi's score for the show is incredible and iconic. I'm particularly fond of Root's theme and the Machine's theme.

The show also uses preexisting musical pieces to great effect. Some standouts to me are "Future Starts Slow" in 2x16, "Fortune Days" in 4x11, "The Day the World Went Away" in 5x10, and "Metamorphosis One" in 5x13.

BEAR

GOOD BOY BEAR

I LOVE YOU BEAR !!!!!

[multitrackdrifting]

Well I didn't write my thoughts on the last ep cause I was playing FF16 but I'll explain why I didn't like the ending (despite loving a lot of the episode) under the cut

There's a lot of ways you can end a political sci-fi story (which Mobile Suit Gundam tends to be) and some of the worst ways it can end is a bleak "and nothing got better" and that often is the resolution for a lot of them, but it's not that bad when it's clear that the isolated conflict would just be covered up and whatever amidst the conclusion of that story. The very grounded and "realistic" stories in UC might fall into this kind of area.

I am of the opinion that more often than not it's bad practice to criticise what isn't there, that is unless you have a legitimate reason to feel that way. In this case, I feel that they brought up the earth subplots and kind of just used to thrust the story forward without actually having anything meaningful to say about Earthian emancipation or even validate that the companies in the story made that place a fucking hell hole in any meaningful fashion. You hear about a lot of the going-ons from people from Earth for sure, but you barely have it in your periphery for the majority of the season except for about 3-ish episodes.

My greatest fear as I've expressed to many friends and other people I talk to about G-Witch is that they would hand-wave all the problems away with a time skip and sadly we got literally this exact thing.

The spectacle and wonder of the family conflict tying up nicely & the canon lesbian relationship is pretty heavily overshadowed for me by the complete dismissal of the very subplot threads they opened in order to describe just how bonkers the Benerit group is/was.

OF course, I am labouring under the assumption that there is no season 3, and IBO didn't even announce theirs till like 4 months after Season 1 ended on a massive cliffhanger but this story did not end on one.

There's no seething and spiteful earth orphan in the epilogue, or any inclination that the story will in-fact continue and that leaves me feeling all the way wrong about how they handled this especially since I have to wait half a year potentially to find out if they plan to make more (which I imagine they will if not specifically to sell more Gunpla).

Of course, you might say that "oh this is a more personal Gundam story" and I don't even really feel like that's a good explanation of why the ending almost feels antithetical to the story itself like, yeah Benerit got dissolved and all was well and eveyrone became friends which is acceptable in your average shounen story but this pretty much felt like an ass-pull in some ways especially when you take in that they neglected to do anything with Earth except => guel gets kidnapped and goes to earth and briefly helps orphans and guerillas => miorine accidentally helps stage a false flag attack and pretty much nothing else?

Like that kind of irks me in the same way that playing FF14 Stormblood and there being almost nothing about Ala Mhigo irks me.

Of course, I am happy that SuleMio is a happy family not just with Prospera, but all of her daughers including Eri.

It's just... way too neat? I seldom call something an ass-pull but hand-waving that Earth is still in strife and barely any consequences were faced by the broader corporations outside of the dissolution of Benerit would be a compelling point if, like Hathaway, it had something to stand on top of (which is that in UC, fucking nothing ever changes, Unicorn happens and Hathaway's Mafty Uprising still happens in spite of Banagher's wager on possibility lmao)

I dunno, I feel happy that they're happy but really upset that they really just dumpstered everything to do with Earth and it just swept so many of the real questions that the very story we watched each week implied it would even try to answer.

I'm really hard to annoy, I love meathead shounen, I love serious and nuanced political writing in anime (e.g. MSG UC & Eighty-Six) but it's not the space magic that annoys me, I'd be a hypocrite to love Gundam Unicorn and hate it here - it's how they just time-skipped everything to a neat and tidy conclusion.

Of course, maybe a S3 announcement (which I have firmly held is probably coming) would change my mind, but yeah this was a great episode but a terrible finale.

Honestly, I even felt irked by the fact that Suletta accepts her mothers choice so plainly and I get it - the parental bonds thing is somehting I don't take for granted, anyone who has had complicated feelings about their own parents understands how a person can come to be like "you've hurt me and the people around me, and yet I still care for you" - I get it! But I really do not like how inconsistent it feels to be cleaning up the bodies of her classmates one episode and kinda shrugging everything she did off in a time-skip but this critique specifically is down to the jarring pacing that others had been complaining to this point - I suppose I am guilty of getting caught up in the spectacle but I almost snapped my neck at how hard this ending veered off

Of course, the natural commentary for this will be "selling off Benerit's assets and aiding Earth is a functional and practical way to help Earth" except that it almost feels like it comes out of nowhere due to the lightspeed pacing of this finale.

They really fumbled writing Earth in this story - yeah, there are nice subtleties in the ending but it still feels way too rushed and jarring for me to like actually find it enjoyable. Bodies don't make a good gundam ending (see: Gundam Unicorn), and space magic doesn't make it bad either (also Gundam UC lol), they just brushed off way too much.

The "incremental change" argument holds decent weight if there was any explicit inclination to continue the story from the time-skip (which I would like to see, preferrably with an Earthian protagonist at the centre of their emancipation struggles).

It was indeed nice to see the Earth girls integrated into Miorine's company, and Sabina does comment that they're not sure if it will amount to what they want - and Mio, far more mature than her younger self, steps towards that future bravely and that's cool.

I like the characterisation of the ending - but yeah, how they kinda just blitz the Earth stuff does not sit right with me.

I did like seeing all the kids being friends & being together after all they've been through, and that is a nice way to tie-up the story, but the way they kinda just use that to justify why they barely explain the rest is wild.

Course, I know I'm probably in the minority here - but pacing doomposters were right - this was a pretty abysmal ending because of how little time they had to work with.

I loved every single episode of this season, except the ending. Loved the first half of the episode, but the latter half is just way too neat and that's not because it needs bodies or something - it really does just feel like "and then it got marginally better".

I know the ending itself explicitly acknowledges that nothing may change, but as I said previously, that only works if you have something to lean on which this story does not since it's unclear if it's even going to get another season.

Systemic change, in reality, is quite incrimental and often feels infinitismally small - and that notion might be more compelling in this bittersweet epilogue if the story had taken more pains to actually explore the earthian-spacian conflict.

Yes, they discuss conflict-sharing/war-partitioning on the different segments of Earth, but they do nothing with it at all other than laud it around as a talking point without making the viewer ever face it except when Prospera attacks Earth. I feel like so much of the Earth-side of the story is left in the abstract, and do not argue to me that it's in the subtleties of Earth house and the things that they say.

I felt like the fella in Plato's cave hearing about something and the only time I actually felt the human side of that story from the people that live on Earth was when Guel was a prisoner of war for an episode and when Miorine has to face the disappointed people who realise they're being attacked.

I had faith the ending would not go "and then it got better", and I know many people will hate that I choose to take that interpretation, but that is pretty much the summation of my feelings about how rapidly they pushed this aside. I love this series, I ahve been gassing this series every single week since like episode 3 - but this ending was unsatisfying - it's not enough to make me hate the series but yeah, I wish we had something more substantive to look toward with future stories or more time spent stressing the "other side" of this conflict.

Yeah, the Benerit group at large is on trial on TV, and there's signs that the world will change & we see future generations of kids on Earth, but I don't think it hit quite right for me. It's not a lack of grit, it's just like, you're enjoying the payoff without the adequate build-up and I feel like I'm possibly not alone in thinking this.

Earth was just a bargaining chip and an elusive idea in this season, and I really do not like that so much was left in the abstract. You can "subtext" anything into existence, but no amount of referential dialogue is going to make up for the lack of a grounded and meaningful representation of their struggle since Sophie and Norea got axed (I did not mind this at the time), and they portrayed every other Earth character outside of Gund-arm as a villain.

I really feel like this aspect of how the story was structured was ultimately quite disappointing and thus, I am annoyed at the resulting payoff.

The romance side of things was cute, and I thoroughly enjoy how thing were tied up with them - especially that Suletta loved her family despite everything (this does not boggle my mind).

But yeah my gripes with the lack of idk time to talk about Earth actually boggles my mind beyond belief.

It's incredibly difficult to feel the actual weight of "yeah Benerit was dissolved and assets redistributed lol" while being presented with next to zero context for what that means and what it could mean. Way too much is left to the imagination and while that's fine in certain kinds of stories, in one wherey ou barely even grapple with the Earth context that you've described to this point it's kind of bonkers.

Yes, I get a lot of people will feel catharsis with this ending because what they're watching for and what I am watching for may be different - that's perfectly okay, but I'm not gonna act like ti didn't disappoint me that we got the most explicit form of a hand-wave (a time skip) to end out an otherwise fantastically written series.

I do not like that one bit and I do not apologise for believing that either.

Here's another scorching take: the next season should focus on Earth, not how the Samayas heal as a family - there might be room for both, but with how neglected Earth felt maybe it's time for a POV change in this world bc they really did FA with that.

In conclusion, I sitll like the show, but this ending was really unfulfilling. I know that winning a battle is not winning the war, but the story took pretty much no pains to eloquently depict the struggles of Earth properly this season despite me thinking that the vast majority of episodes were absolutely fantastic in spite of that.

I think Suletta, Mio and Guel were quite well-written and most of the supporting cast too, but this flaw in the narrative structure is insanely glaring for me and call that pretentious if you want but I genuinely believe what I said here

Edit: I guess, the ending just doesn't say anything super daring that that's pretty disappointing.

Edit 2: I completely forgot to go on a rant but, that the use of a WMD (space laser) was not even a point of intrigue for a future conflict is also wild.

[autisticgirliesbracket]

What makes Ayda Aguefort from Dimension 20: Fantasy High the autistic girlie ever of all time? Here's what the people have to say:

Ayda-related asks/reblogs: x This post will be updated after each round!

Image ID in alt text and under the readmore.

[Image ID. White slide with a picture of Ayda on the left. On the right are many MANY text boxes which read,

"It's canonical, but outside of the official stuff, she's struggled all of her life (lives) with not understanding subtext to the point where screwing it up is one of her greatest fears, she made her crush sign an NDA before admitting that she liked her, and she was so concerned about her paramour (she calls Fig her paramour) that she considered sending fantasy memos to every single plane of existance telling everyone to be nice to her or she'd kill them, and the she made good on that threat by drowning hell, which could just be normal but feels like an autistic swag moment."

"She’s canonically autistic. She runs a library on a pirate island, she’s a half phoenix pirate wizard, she has an entire section in her library dedicated to books on how to make friends, she loves her friends, she loves her girlfriend, she has no control over her tone of voice, she constantly sounds angry, her best friend made her a spell called “Ayda’s comprehend subtext” so that she wouldn’t feel left out of conversations, she tried to flood hell for her girlfriend, I relate to this woman on a personal, spiritual and emotional level."

"she's canon!!! they say she's autisticit in the show!!! she's super monotone and blunt (but SO kind), she can't understand subtext/is super literal, she's very transactional in how she thinks and behaves. later in the show, her best friend invents a spell to help her understand subtext! they MAKE HER A DISABILITY AID FOR HER AUTISM!!! she's so full of love, she's so smart, she's learning how to have friends for the first time, even though she experiences things differently than them. i love her."

"Ayda is canon autistic. She's a librarian on a pirate ship city. She's a lesbian phoenix. Her autism leads to humorous moments but she's never the butt of the joke. AND she has a super cool rockstar gf <3"

"she was incredibly autistic-coded right from the first introduction of her character, she has trouble understanding hidden meanings to statements and prefers to just bluntly say what she means, she has trouble expressing her feelings in a way that she wants to, she struggles with social situations, she dedicated an entire room of her library just to books about friendship because she really wants to have friends, and she's half phoenix and is reborn when she dies. also there was so much positive response to her and so many questions about her being autistic that brennan then went and did some research to better understand autism and made her explicitly autistic in cannon (like, says the word out loud in character, very direct). also she's gay and dating one of the player characters and they are incredible and fig loves her not just in spite of the things that ayda perceives as bad things about herself (related to autism making things like social stuff hard for her) but for them, because they are part of her and she loves all of her just for being her. also i love her so much and her character arc is so important to me of accepting that there isn't anything wrong with her, she's just different because she's autistic but that's not a bad thing and she can find friends (and a girlfriend!) that love her for exactly who she is."

"She's canonically autistic! she generally misunderstands social cues (always admits it and asks for them to be explained to her which is iconic behaviour, I wish I could shoot that straight lol), often speaks in a monotone and uses minimal facial expressions, is a librarian (autistic ass career), hasn't had any luck friends prior to the story (but now her gf and bff are super supportive and great!) and is a Huge Nerd (very intelligent)"

"She canonically has autism! She's a wizard whose special interest is spells and the history of magic and she lives in a library that she runs by herself. Despite the DM Brennan not having autism (to my knowledge at least idk) he does a really good job playing her without dehumanizing her and she's a beloved NPC by the cast and fans alike. Also she has a girlfriend :)"

"Canonically autistic!! She is very blunt and transactional with others, even close loved ones, takes things very literally, and is normally extremely stoic and intense as her resting emotion (but gets very excited about magic + her new friends!). None of her autistic traits are ever seen as negative, and she is celebrated by all her friends for being the way she is! She wasn't specifically written to be autistc, but as the show was coming out many fans were asking if she was, and since this season came out live over the course of months, the DM added a whole section about her realizing she's autistic + her loved ones supporting her and helping her find ways to express herself and exist comfortably. There's also just something very autistic about wizards idk."

"Canon autistic black lesbian teenage pirate librarian. Look at those words and tell me what’s not to love. Has a cool devil girlfriend. Makes her sign a contract after they kiss. Best friends with anxiety wizard. Incepted “fascinating” into my vocabulary. I love her."

"She canonically autistic!!!!!! She was confirmed in the last episode of the show she’s in but leading up to that she’s shown to misunderstand social cues and have formal ways of speaking and special interests in wizardry. She’s very self conscious about this and struggles with it throughout the show and the thing that’s so important about her to me is that so many people love her. So many people see her how she is and they think it’s wonderful and perfect. Ayda gets to have a cute teen romance with her cool girlfriend just like anyone else. I adore her. She’s a phoenix, she’s a lesbian, and she’s autistic, perfect woman."

"Ayda is a black lesbian, clearly shown to be deeply emotional and caring despite her flat affect, hyper-aware and anxious of her social awkwardness (rather than being comically oblivious), never infantilized, capable of having strong friendships and relationships, who is also confirmed autistic in canon without it being an offhand joke. She is also a half-phoenix divination wizard and the librarian of the Compass Points Library which is located in Leviathan (a vast pirate city made up of thousands of shipwrecks all connected together to create a floating island). In the epilogue of the final episode of Dimension 20: Fantasy High Sophomore Year, Brennan (the DM) narrates that Ayda is diagnosed with autism by the school’s therapist/counselor. Finding language for her experiences clearly brings her great relief, as she seems to finally have context for her place in the world. In the first episode of Adventuring Party, Dimension 20’s talkback show, Brennan stated that he “wanted to model her after the Sherlock archetype,” of a person who is “brilliant and goodhearted… but not necessarily existing on that social level,” through a lens that audiences never get to see: a Black lesbian. She was not intended to be autistic initially, but soon after her creation, he realized—through the audience questioning if Ayda was autistic—that she was modeled after his friends with ASD who are also “very academic and intense in that way,” and decided to do research to make her representation more accurate and nuanced. She has an entire section of her library dedicated to friendship. The books in it have advice like "give your friends oranges so they don't get scurvy" because it was written by pirates. Because she thinks naming spells after yourself is arrogant but having a spell named after you is awesome she invented a spell as a gift for her friend. It's called Adaine's Furious Fist and lets you channel rage and arcane power into a supercharged punch that you could hypothetically use to absolutely wreck your abusive father. And in return Adaine invents Ayda's Comprehend Subtext, which aids the caster in understanding implied but not stated communication. All of this: Link!"

Continued,

"confirmed as autistic in canon! she has a very monotone yet intense way of speaking. she feels emotion quite strongly but usually has a neutral expression. she'll frequently ask for clarifications about what is normal or expected in a given social situation (which surrounding characters always answer without judgement or teasing). she's stated that she knows she thinks and experiences the world differently than most people, but doesn't understand why this is until the end of the series when she's able to learn about other people like her"

"canonically autistic!! speaks bluntly and plainly and often asks for subtext explanations. rejection sensitivity is a theme that is explored for here and it is very important to me :) also in a beautiful adhd/autie relationship!! she is one of my fav blorbos and I get emotional thinking abt her"

"It’s canon!!! In the finale she’s holding books on autism and crying saying “this is normal” and her best friend makes her a wizard spell called “ayda’s comprehend subtext” to help her out. It’s adorable and I love Ayda sm. shes a half-phoenix who cries fire and she loves her girlfriend so much they’re adorable❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥" End ID.]

[becausegoodbye]

the greatest ever fantasy for passive and diffident trans girls

The greatest ever fantasy for passive and diffident trans girls is a 2006 anime called Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. This, astonishingly, is the plot:

Hazumu is a very gentle young boy who loves gardening and has a crush on his classmate, Yasuna. Then all of a sudden an alien spaceship crashes into him, completely obliterating his body. The aliens didn't intend to do this – the aliens are nice – so they set about reconstructing the poor human they just squished. They're able to restore Hazumu to perfect health, with just one small alteration: something about the process inadvertently changed Hazumu's sex, and she's now a girl. Head to toe, unmistakably, a girl.

This isn't a secret. The aliens announce to the world whole that they've done this, and request that everyone simply treat Hazumu as a girl now. The rest of the show is mainly about Hazumu adjusting to life as a girl, and indecisively navigating a lesbian love triangle between her crush Yasuna and her tomboyish friend Tomari. But truth be told: there's not actually a lot of 'adjusting' that needs to be done. Hazumu is so plainly happier as a girl. There's no bargaining, no despair, no "oh no, how could this happen to me??" Hazumu just instantly rolls with it. Some others have a little difficulty with the transition, but Hazumu literally never does. She just wants to learn all the girl stuff she didn't know about, spend time with her friends, and live her best life. Which she does.

At Hazumu's age, I had no conscious sense of my own transness. There were all sorts of little signs identifiable in retrospect, but if you'd asked me whether I'd like to have a spaceship crash into my and change my sex, I think I would have been like, "Uhh no thank you?" But I'll tell you this. If a spaceship had crashed into me and changed my sex, I would have really impressed people with how well I took it. The adults in my life would have been stunned at how bravely and cheerfully I dealt with such a shocking blow, how quickly I adjusted to the idea, how naturally I just got on with things. "What an impressively emotionally mature boy," they would have thought – "I mean girl."

This is a curious and funny depth at which transness can be buried: unable to articulate a desire to be the other sex, but being able to deal with suddenly becoming the other sex with remarkable equanimity. One of the things that feels special to me about Kashimashi: Girls Meets Girl as a trans narrative is that it feels pretty clear that if the spaceship crash had never happened, Hazumu just ... would have been a boy. A quiet, gentle, uncomplaining boy, whose relationships with girls were a bit different to others, but other than that: a boy. But as soon as external circumstances intervened and made the decision for her – it's a repeated emphasis that Hazumu is very indecisive – the clarity is instantaneous. Hazumu was always a trans girl; she just only realised it through the gift of a medical transition so instantaneous and perfect that the fantasy of it can make a heart gallop.

This is rare kind of trans story. There are lots of trans people who always knew on some level, but there are also a lot of us who didn’t. It can be overwhelming to think about the contingencies involved with the development of even the thought of transition: the hideous army of unchosen circumstances penning our thoughts in at rifle-point and dictating our social and material possibilities. Kashimashi gives us a trans protagonist who, left to her own devices, probably would have just stayed a boy. She wouldn’t have wanted to put anyone to any trouble. But the story asks: "What if a giant fucking spaceship crushed your body into atoms and accidentally medically transitioned you, huh? Would you accept being a girl then?"

Which, for some of us, is weirdly the right question.

*

The show actually has another trick up its sleeve, and it's a beautiful one. Yasuna, the crush, has always liked Hazumu back, but she's been dealing with a strange and difficult affliction that's made things hard for her. For some reason, she "can't see men". That is: she can see women and girls perfectly well, but when men enter her field of vision, they're just these scary grey blobs. She can register their presence, and sometimes identify them by voice, but she gets them confused all the time, and it's been a lot safer to just try to minimise her contact with boys and men. It makes the world very intimidating to navigate, and is the source of her shyness and reticence.

Obviously, "men are basically just grey blobs to me" is not a totally uncommon lesbian experience. But in Yasuna's case it's literalised, and deeply confusing, and you really feel how isolating it would be to attempt to live with it. There is never any attempt to explain Yasuna's condition, even to a goofy anime "aliens did it" degree. It's simply the situation for Yasuna, and she's been dealing with it alone for a long time.

The story feels like it's set up to say: oh, Yasuna didn't used to be able to see Hazumu, but now Hazumu's a girl, so now she can! And they can have a little gay love story! Cute! But that's not what the story does. Instead, the story is emphatically clear on this point:

Yasuna could see Hazumu the entire time.

During a time when every single man and boy on earth appeared to Yasuna as a featureless grey blob, Hazumu was the only 'boy' who was actually alive to her, who had a face, who she could bear to be around. Whatever was responsible for Yasuna's 'condition', magic or illness or curse or contrivance: Hazumu was always exempt. During a time when everyone else saw Hazumu as a boy, Yasuna was the only one who actually saw her.

This is unbearably romantic, but also shockingly affirming. Hazumu was always a girl! There is no non-trans explanation for any of this! The show has no explicit consciousness of this: the word 'trans' is never used, and nobody ever speaks as though anyone's ever gone through anything like this before. The language used (at least in the translated subtitles I had access to) is just "used to be a boy" and "is a girl now". And yet the whole story is the most remarkable trans fantasy, conjuring the most deeply blessed form of transness imaginable. A transness where the whole world knows you used to be a boy, but accepts you wholly as a girl. A transness of instant perfect painless transition, which you didn't even need to choose, but can simply enjoy. A transness actualised by aliens and confirmed by magic.

It's really something.

*

Distasteful post-script:

Would it even be an anime if there wasn't an incredibly gross and off-putting running 'gag' that makes it impossible to recommend without shamefaced caveats? Kashimashi is no exception. After Hazumu's transition, her dad becomes creepily attracted to her, and around once every episode, there's a brief interlude – usually less than 30 seconds, and played entirely for laughs – where he attempts to molest her. He's constantly attempting to bathe with her, take revealing photographs of her, and touch her sexually. These attempts invariably conclude with Hazumu's mother catching him in the act, making a snarly face, and bonking him on the head. Then everyone acts like it didn't happen, and he does it again the next episode.

This is the fucking worst. Everyone hates it. It's an intensely upsetting smear on an otherwise beautiful show. In order to enjoy the things about Kashimashi that are genuinely rare and good, you kinda have to just decide to ignore the dad stuff, and I wouldn't quibble with anyone who thought it not a price worth paying. (I'd really love to go through and – similar to what I did with My Hero Academia – edit together a version that just simply got rid of all of the lecherous dad shit. It wouldn't be hard; you'd only be cutting 20-30 seconds from most episodes, and these moments are never referenced outside of that. Unfortunately, I'm pretty time-poor at the moment, so this'll have to be filed under "something I'd like to do when I have more time". Hopefully at some point I'll be able to. I'd love for more people to see this show, but I also really don't want to expose more people to the world's worst fucking running gag, so being able to give people files with that shit neatly snipped out would be a mercy.)

*

Look, Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl a silly anime in lots of ways. A lot of the episodes are kinda throwaway, the dad stuff is completely unforgivable, and I personally didn't love the ending (love triangles are annoying). But that core nugget of trans fantasy – what if aliens did it – is so resonant and joyous that I watched every episode enraptured. It's a cis cliche to call trans people "brave" without actually doing anything to make our lives easier, but the wonderful thing about Hazumu's story is that she didn't need to be brave. Honestly, she's kind of a scaredy-cat the whole series! And ruinously indecisive! Relatable queen!!! All of this, coupled with the after-the-fact clarity of her transition – delighting in being a girl only after being able to try it – makes her a trans protagonist I can see myself in to a pretty embarrassing degree.

Sometimes it takes a spaceship crashing into you, y'know?

[guentzel]

QUESTIONS FOR U DEAR FRIEND

1. what's your favorite snack?

2. best film you have seen in the past 3 months?

3. a book you think everyone should read?

AHHH THANK YOU BELOVED ;u;

1.

i would murder for a cookies and cream mochi or just any flavored mochi. but i do adore me some chips as a quick and easy snack, and i really love ruffles cheddar and sour cream, i could eat the whole bag if im not paying attention

2.

i haven't watched a whole lot of movies lately (however i do watch a lot of youtube documentaries which, uh, isnt the greatest but i do love me so niche content) but i watched princess mononoke for the first time last month and it was gorgeous!!! i loved the story and animation and music and it just was so emotional. i was honestly kind've sad i hadnt seen it before because its just djsfkhgsdfg like its beautiful. its gorgeous. its everything to me.

3.

there's two right now, one is a series and the other is a standalone!! i feel like everyone should read the godfather by mario puzo, there was a ton of changes that the movie did that were good but i still believe the original novel is a thousand percent better. the way puzo writes is so mesmerizing to me, i dont know what happened after this but none of his other novels capture me the same way as this one. this is the first book i ever read more than once, and my copy of it is pretty destroyed bc of all the use its gotten.

the next is the locked tomb series (ie: gideon the ninth, harrow the ninth, nona the ninth, and the forecoming alecto the ninth) which was recommended to me by @theflirtmeister and i literally cannot thank them enough. necromancy and lesbians and fucked up shit, its sooo good, and the way tamsyn muir writes is so?? enchanting?? and so utterly fits into the world she creates. she leaves you asking so many questions and they usually get answered by the end of the novel, and if they don't, you find out in the next and its just so?? satisfying??? i literally cannot explain enough how much i love this series and how much i think everyone should read it.

[kittensartswriting]

Bear Castle Chronicles 2.0

(actually there has been at least 4 different versions but let's not go there...)

I have officially un-shelved BCC (reintro here) after almost 2 years of hiatus. At the time I was very frustrated with it and felt like I didn't know anymore what I wanted and what was it's point. Now I have rediscovered a passion for it. With more distance to the story, I can more easily see the darlings that need to be killed and where I want to take this story. I will be rewriting some of the worldbuilding and restructuring the plot. Hopefully I get back to drafting it soon.

I drew some of the most central characters as I was thinking about the fashion. There's no big departures from my previous ideas, but I have much clearer image about the fashion in my mind now, so mission succeeded. I will use this as an opportunity to do a little re-intro to the characters. There is some changes to them, some older (which I never publicly introduced) some I have done since I un-shelved this WIP.

Valeri cor Mantgamia (left)

he/him

Second youngest main sibling (25)

Accidentally becomes a spy but oops is the worst liar on the planet

Biromantic demisexual

Is in cavalry and there has all the homoromantic tension a man could ask for but is unfortunately the most repressed man

Is in for an existential crisis and unreasonable amounts of maiming (because he's my poor little meow meow)

Fiolev cor Mantgamia (right)

he/they

Youngest main sibling (19)

So in a much earlier iteration of the story he was a girl, but the character wasn't working out and I kinda made a whole different character, a boy, but I've still struggled figuring him out. You could say I transed his gender, so now he is transmasc

Valeri made him dress as a boy when they were kids and homeless, and while he doesn't see himself as a boy, he definitely doesn't see himself as a girl either and rather presents as a boy

Uses his ability to turn into a girl to con people though

Accidentally cons his way to being possessed by a demon and being part of a plot to start a civil war

Aroace

Faerathos cor Mantgamia (bottom)

he/him

Oldest main sibling (28)

He was supposed to be the one tragically cishet sibling... They were all cishet at first....

He is bi of course he is bi I'm incapable of not making my characters bi

Accidentally commits high treason by (accidentally of course) having an affair with the empress

Also commits high bi disaster by accidentally having a thing with the emperor too, his long time homoerotic friend

Agrippa noé Moireau (top left)

she/her

Tragically straight

Groomed to be The Long Lost Rightful Heir and The Chosen One

Is actually a tool of imperial control

Valeri's love interest

Cassia cor Mantgamia (top right)

she/her

Second oldest main sibling (27)

Plotting murder literally every waking moment

Spying for the enemy with the goal of overthrowing the government and murdering the imperial family

Targets Julie, who is partroned by an imperial prince, but accidentally catches feelings but oops she is bad at feelings (the whole family is very accident-prone)

Collected on the outside, disaster bi on the inside

Julie noé Maupin (bottom left)

she/her

Opera singer master duelist lesbian casanova occasional novelist

Has a dark secret

Does NOT want to get involved with any political shenanigas (gets involved with political shenanigans)

Cateline (bottom right)

she/her

Assassin to a criminal organization Fiolew gets entangled with

One-sidedly in love with their leader who has ambitions of power

Mute and communicates with writing

Bi

Marcus K'irhinzaham (left)

he/him

The commander of Mantgamia house guard, which now only consists of him, and (according to popular (and his) knowledge) Faerathos is the only one left to guard anyway

Widely recognized as the greatest swordsman of his time

Short king (169 cm)

Bi

Cúén "Fechín" cor Faélci (right)

he/him

Previously named Conan cor Faélin, the last name changed a bit because I did some changes to his language and his first name didn't really fit the language either

Known in the army as Fechín, because he is imposing as his dead cousin to spy for the Cabalusian independence army

Gay trans man (which makes his cover solid, people think there's only daughter his age in his aristocratic family)

An asshole especially to Valeri but oops they have to secretly work together now

Gid'alon Child of Stars (bottom)

they/any

Vašáin, Ahinian third gender, in their case it means they are intersex and non-binary

In exile after doing a little bit of heresy

Just wants to do their research on the spiritrealm but oops one of the demons they studied possessed Fiolew

It's been such a long time since I used the tag list, so if you were tagged, let me know if you want to be continued to be tagged and I'll add you to the new tag list! If you weren't tagged, but would liked to be in future, also let me know! Tag list under the cut.

bcc tag list: @lady-redshield-writes @worldbuildng @siarven @hell-yeah-fantasy @heniareth @wilde-writing @contes-de-rheio @kainablue @lillayalightfoot @teacupwriter @sancta-seraphina @writingnosefreak @dotr-rose-love @writingwithhotchocolate @dove-actually @kathritana @ettawritesnstudies @the-ichor-of-ruination

(I forgot to add the taglist at first, I hope it still works even if I edited it in)

[literary-illuminati]

Books I Read In September

45. The Oleander Sword, by Tasha Suri

Pre-ordered this, and I’m entirely happy with what I got. I mean it’s got intrigue and angst and the literal and metaphorical selling of souls and lesbians and eldritch horrors and war crimes, what’s not to love?

But really, I’m pretty sure I already made the joke, but SFF lesbians and weird power dynamics around fealty and martyrdom sure are a pair, huh? (Or maybe that’s just a random bit of selection bias in the books I read/see talked about, but eh. I should catch up on Montress.)

Anyway, Malini is a joy to read, and the Yaksha are absolutely gorgeous and come across as rather believably alien, though I really do wish they weren’t quite so straightforwardly malevolent, and the temple/palace intrigues with whatever the asshole emperor’s name was and his priests was great. Can’t wait for book 3.

46. None the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My other pre-ordered book of the year. And look, I am largely outsourcing my opinions on this book to the ongoing 24/7 symposium digging into every bit of symbolism and possible reference in these things going on here in the tag. But, like, book good. 

Also Pal and Cam, my beloveds. And Nona is adorable. 

I need to go scream in the wilderness a bit again.

47. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

This month’s attempt to acquire some Culture, via what was apparently the most influential book of 2007 (literally recommended to me because a coworker’s book club is doing it). 

But no, this was good! Very much of it’s time, though less in a ‘dated in a bad way’ way, and more in a ‘future generations of college students will get assigned this and told to write an essay about the cultural fallout of the War On Terror.’ 

It really, really committed to the whole ‘life story told in a conversation over dinner’ framing device, to a degree that books basically never do - the prose of the whole thing still felt conversational and like it could actually be said by one person to another. The constant asides to the cuisine being served and the order of the courses and everything did eventually start to grate, though. 

The big central twist is, well, barely a twist - except that the title gives you a very definite idea of where the protagonist’s arc is going to end up that you bring with you into the book. Still, really well done.

I’m surprised you don’t see the janissarya analogy made more often in modern polemic. Shoe doesn’t exactly fit, but close enough that you’d think it’d get some use.

48. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

I really do adore Murderbot stories. They’re just perfectly sized for a lazy afternoon or two of reading, they’ve got the plot structure of a tightly edited 40-minute tv episode, and they’re just great fun comfort reads. Perfect book pringles. (Also Murderbot is one of the greatest protagonists of all time).

This one in particular would have honestly worked pretty well as a finale to the series? Or, since it clearly isn’t, I guess ‘works as a season finale’ is the better way to put it? It resolves the central underlying plot thread that’s been running through the books so far quite nicely, anyway. 

I totally admit that aside from Murderbot only, like, four characters have made a sufficient impression that I can reliably identify them by just their names, though. 

49. Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky 

Hey, I finally finished the last Hugo nominee! Now to start feeling properly guilty about failing to answer that ask about my ranking/opinions from a month ago. 

But no, this was good. The only Tchaikovsky I’d read before was Children of Time/Ruin, so this was definitely a change of pace (obvious similarities in setting aside). The whole central conceit of ‘fantasy setting is actually the result of an apocalypse destroying a technologically advanced civilization and the descendents of the survivors viewing the remnants as magical relics and sorcery’ is so thoroughly cliche I think people just stopped writing it for a couple decades, but the execution is really well done. 

Nyr and Lynette are both fun POVs, anyway, and I absolutely adore anything that has multiple POVs seeing/taking part in the same events and interpreting them wildly differently. The one chapter that had two columns with Nyr providing exposition on one side and what Lynette&co actually understood him as saying on the other was great. 

Tchaikovsky also did a really excellent job of capturing the whole horror and grief and ennui of being the Last Of Your Kind better than I usually see, and also saying Fuck the Prime Directive, which is always appreciated. 

Also incredibly endearing that Nyr’s whole transhuman civilization gave themselves giant badass horns and then collectively decided to pretend it was for pragmatic utilitarian reasons. 

50. Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

Because it’s 2 murder 2 bot month, I guess (but no all my holds on these really did just come in at once).

So apparently this was actually written after the novel, which I only found out after finishing it, but chronologically it seems to have taken place before? Which conveniently means I didn’t accidentally ruin any big twists for myself.  

Anyway, this was a fun detective story sort of thing. Murderbot being continuously annoyed at how much harder the lack of a dystopian panopticon made their job was a great running gag.

51. The Thousand Eyes by A. K. Larkwood 

Because it’s magical lesbians month, I guess. 

But no, this was a fun read. The whole setting and tone were very, hmm, D&D? Like a real mixture of super fantastical elements and generic fantasy things given different names (there are elves, and orcs, and for some reason specifically yuan-ti) and then the vision of society and the economics and the mindset and vocabulary of everyone who hasn’t been asleep in a ditch for ten thousand years is just incredibly modern. Not a complaint, it’s just very much a thing. 

My actual complaint is that this was like four different discrete stories stacked on top of each other and put into a compactor until they all fit in one book. There were a lot of times where I was kind of left feeling that Larkwood was relying on me knowing how a given story/character arc goes so she could just skip through the high points and then resolve it without necessarily building it up beforehand. 

(I also have a perpetual dislike for the plot beat of ‘oh no, the abusive cult who raised you was just doing their religion wrong. We’ve got a direct line to your/their god and he’s actually a great guy!’)

Interesting how minor a character Csorwe is in this one compared to Unspoken Name, really, but Shuthmili and Tal are both incredibly fun POVs so can’t say I really mind. Tsundere dragon goddess of betrayal and destruction was also a great time. 

[bustyasianbeautiespod]

“Aziraphale and Crowley are in love and Maggie and Nina are not.”

SAY THAT!!!

lit er al ly... like i don't expect them to be the greatest love story of our time and all the times before and all the times hereafter (a/c takes that role) but i want to at least believe they could go on a full two-hour date and enjoy themselves and currently i am not getting that! like at least they talked more than anathema and newt but at least anathema and newt were like. conceptually interesting dykwim? like, alternate secondary pairings i would actually give a shit about

anathema and nina. anathema ends s1 w a lot going on regarding free will and having to figure out what to do next w her life so she's already interesting to begin with. nina seems like a decisive person who has the career aspect of her life together so that'd be helpful. anathema would also be fresh off a newt breakup so understands feeling trapped within a relationship by obligation and perhaps thinking of lindsay as a shitty prophecy book would help nina disentangle herself emotionally from all that! and i think despite the memory weirdness she and aziraphale or crowley would reconnect somehow so that's how they meet. also i want anathema doing witch stuff in the coffeeshop AND if she decides to get some more phds after s1 this is a perfect place to work. it's their time to be besties with benefits! also if neilman understood my aromantic lesbian anathema agenda, wouldn't it be interesting to have a story where a/c are trying to get them together romantically when that's just not something anathema would ever want and also talk about the ways qpps and other forms of relationships are read as romance by the untrained heaven eye but it's how the ppl within the relationship define it that matters?

the actual nuns maggie service and nina sosanya played in s1. yes i know maggie's character died but honestly adam could've brought her back bc her death is his birth's fault. she wakes up 11 years later disoriented and scared and the purpose of her life has been thwarted! she picks herself up and reconnects with her family and an inherited record shop. she sees mary hodges across the street running a cafe after her job training facility got shut down and both of them stop in their tracks. were they friends at all? did mary ever wonder what became of maggie's character after she ran from the order? both of them represent jumbled pasts they want to put behind them but maybe this is the opportunity they need to process and swap stories!

idk literally anyone else

- Crystal :)

[antisocial-transfag]

Extent of queer rep in trek shows I’ve finished

TOS

Gay people don’t seem to exist

Like several times they’re waxing poetic about love and they talk about it in the most aggressively heteronormative way possible

Still somehow Spirk is the greatest love story of all time (dead serious)

(seriously though props to everyone involved with the show that helped make this as gay as it was back in the 1960s including George Takei who tried to push for a gay crewmember)

TNG

You get a “very special episode“ or two (from a cishet perspective of course)

Including the trope that gets on my nerves “what if I was opressed for being normal“

(in the other one after holding onto him through a buckwild series of events Bev breaks up with her trill boyfriend because she’s a woman now)

I see the urge to ship Data and Geordi bc this show is pretty boring in that respect

DS9

Queer subtext ahoy

In all levels but literal Jadzia Is Trans

Jadzia is also bi but in an alien worm kind of way so who’s to say

A couple of lesbian kisses but the men have to mutually pine for eachother forever lest we gross out the straight male audience

Honestly only disappoints when you see the mirror universe episodes and think about what could have been

[jiskblr]

I just finished binging The Gods are Bastards and I highly recommend it. It's set in a 'late Old West'/industrial fantasy world where the 'age of adventures' is widely considered to have ended a century ago. It follows the eight-person Class of 1182 at the Unseen University at Last Rock, an invitation-only college headed by the greatest archmage ever to live (possibly excluding dragons), Professor Arachne Tellwyrn, absolute bitch and Enlightenment philosopher. School field trips include "this town is falling apart with internecine violence, fix it" and "the werewolves around this slightly-cursed city are howling every night, figured out why and fix it". This is normal at the ULR.

The world has a bunch of interesting religious and physical peculiarities keeping the magic embedded into the world pretty thoroughly. Like the frontier that the Old West covered is not just plains occupied by Indians, it's the Golden Sea, a literally-trackless, unmappable infinite prairie where the only reliable directions are "uphill is further in, downhill is further out", and no way to predict where along the frontier you'll pop out. Even time warps; at one point the Class of 1182 meet and fight a smilodon. (A similar thing happens in the forested Deep Wild, where lives Naiya the elder goddess of nature.) There's still natives - the plains elves live primarily within or around the edges of the Golden Sea, and have a native-like culture. And an army of horse nomads once escaped into it and raided the entire frontier for a decade before they got worn down by attrition.

The main cast, Class of 1182:

Trissiny Avelea: Hand of Avei, i.e. the world's sole paladin of the goddess of justice, war, and feminism. Orphan raised by the Avenist church, intelligent and extensively educated in war and law, but initially very sheltered. Spends most of the story expanding her range, learning to think along other lines, use other methods of problem-solving than combat, and inhabit other perspectives. (She was 13 before anyone reassured her that being heterosexual wasn't a mental disorder.)

Princess Zaruda Carmelita Xingyu Sameera Meredith Punaji, "Ruda" to everyone at school. Princess and presumptive heir to the pirate kingdom of Punaji. Like her entire family, cursed "to drink and never be drunk", meaning she's the only student exempt from ULR's dry campus. Incredibly stereotypical, except when she chooses not to be. Extremely competent politician and swordfighter, but least scary member of her class.

Teal Falconer: heiress to Falconer Industries, manufacturers of the best and most common enchanted carriages (her father is essentially Henry Ford). Host to the archdemon Vadrieny, youngest of the daughters of Elilial, goddess of cunning and Hell, and sole survivor. Teal is a butch lesbian bard, an extremely committed pacifist, and managed to prevent herself and Vadrieny exploding when she was possessed by the power of love and acceptance. Vadrieny nonetheless lost all her memories.

Shaeine nur Ashaele d’zin Awarrion: youngest daughter of the drow Matriarch of House Awarrion, which produces the diplomats for the city of Tar'naris, a drow city which recently allied with the Tiraan Empire. Shaeine is a priestess of the 'upper-tunnel' drow goddess Themynra, goddess of judgment, and a trained diplomat like all her family. (As opposed to Scyllith, elder goddess of light, beauty, and cruelty, creator of Hell, who the 'lower-tunnel' drow worship and Themynra's worshipers keep bottled up away from the surface.)

Juniper: dryad, youngest of Naiya's daughters. Extremely hot, extremely dangerous, extremely difficult to kill, and even more extremely unwise to kill, because Naiya would take issue with her murderer and everyone else within about a half-mile. Knows almost nothing about civilization except how it tastes (kinda like pork), but she's here to learn. By the end of her freshman year, she has let more sexual partners live than all other dryads put together. Complete sweetheart.

Fross: pixie, the tiny, completely inexhaustible granddaughters of Naiya. Probably the smartest pixie to ever live, due to her wild talent that allowed her to eat fey energy and turn it into intellect and arcane energy instead of just enhancing her fey gifts. Absolutely fascinated by civilization and has read everything she could find about how it works before the first day of classes. Also a complete sweetheart.

Tobias Caine: Hand of Omnu, paladin of the god of life, the sun, and agriculture. Skilled in Sun Style martial arts, a philosophically-pacifist Omnist style; also skilled in being the mom friend. Like Triss, orphan raised by his church, but his temple was in the big city so he's a lot less isolated. Quietly gay, which is probably frustrating since the only other guy in his year is his brother in all but name.

Gabriel Arquin: half-hethelax demon, which means he could be thrown off a mountain and he wouldn't even sprain an ankle. Pathologically bad at thinking before he speaks, at least initially. Nice guy once he starts to cool off his hothead. Gets a major promotion at the end of freshman year which I won't spoil.

Non-Students:

Eserite Bishop Antonio Darling: Currently the representative to the Universal Church of the Pantheon from the church of Eserion, god of thieves and subtlety. Formerly Boss 'Sweet', head of the Thieves' Guild. Everybody's friend and model believer in Eserite theology, whose first dictum is "all systems are corrupt". Handed over High Priest duties to Boss 'Tricks' and became Bishop instead to pursue some personal political and covert agendas.

Professor Arachne Tellwyrn: archmage of archmages, absolute asshole, professor of history, political science, and philosophy. Philosophically opposed to having chill but will sometimes attempt it for practical reasons. Doesn't know where she was born, and interrogated every extant god about it before she settled down to found the University. Committed deicide once; everyone agrees that he fucking had it coming.

Joseph P. Jenkins: The Sarasio Kid, greatest wandslinger in the world. Walking stereotype of a polite, well-mannered roving hero. Never misses. Almost never loses a hand of poker. High-functioning autistic savant who literally perceives the entire world as data and can compute all the math required for impossibly-good trick shots in his head instantly.

Also featuring: Zanzayed the Blue, notorious fop and wastrel of a dragon, who has a three-millennium feud with Arachne which is almost indistinguishable from a close friendship. Avenist Bishop Basra Syrinx, expert duelist, fantastic political operator, and complete sociopath. Archpope Justinian of the Universal Church, who apparently sincerely desires to elevate all of humanity (and probably other sapients) to divinity and yet is among the most contemptibly hateable pieces of shit ever to grace the page. Principia Locke, tag 'Keys', inscrutable con-artist and possibly the best thief in the world. Jenny Everywhere, world-shifting adventurer and favored employee of Vesk the god of bards. (And unlike all her other open-source appearances, actually well-used by the story.) Brother Ingvar, Huntsman of Shaath, unwilling prophet. Duchess Ravana Madouri, who coup'd her father and brother at the age of 17 and successfully framed them for the treason they had committed but concealed.

[cerosin-bis]

Hey Cero, have you any MaraxIskra headcanons? based on their interactions/dialogue in mw19 i couldn't be left more convinced that they're literally IT lol especially since Mara calls her jeva which in venezuelan is a romantic slang for a girlfriend/woman

(hope that doesn't upset Alex Zedra tho..)

Hey! I do have a few that I'll share. The "jeva" bit is interesting, I did think that their interactions were really cute and I 100% hc Mara as a lesbian so this makes it all even better <3

Mara is very much an introvert, and Iskra also is although she's more social. Both got along well with each other, immediately clicking together as friends at the start. It is definitely a relationship that took a lot of time to be a thing, a strangers to friends to lovers timeline complete over the course of almost 2 years

The thing is, they were both completely oblivious to the feelings they developed. It was obvious to the outside eye the pining was MUTUAL and it lasted like. Six unbearable months. (for them AND for everyone around them rolling their eyes because When will they ask each other out)

Iskra and Farah are close, and it's actually Farah who encouraged Iskra to ask Mara on a date because she was like "look it can't continue like this she only has eyes for you Please do something"

Due to their respective stories and ofc their personalities, both of them are tough, resilient and also extremely stubborn. Their arguments can get really messy, but they care a lot about each other and always discuss the matters once waters have calmed down and end up being even stronger as a couple.

Both are very independent but Mara in particular needs quality time. Iskra is very work-focused, and her greatest proof of love is how much time she naturally allocates to them both. They will stargaze together and you'll find them oversleeping on a rooftop in the morning.